APP.L Regulatory News (APP)

25 Sep 2007 12:22

Park Group PLC25 September 2007 For immediate release: 25 September 2007 PARK GROUP PLC ("Park" or "the Company") AGM STATEMENT At the Company's Annual General Meeting held today Peter Johnson Park Chairmanmade the following statement: "In the year under review our Christmas savings and voucher businesses performedstrongly with both achieving significant levels of growth. The cash savings business increased revenue by a pleasing 28% year on year. Inaddition, our corporate voucher sales increased revenue by 44% year on year. These combined businesses achieved a 33% growth in revenue to £305m and profitbefore tax increased to £10.2m. During the year we completed our exit from lending activities following theclosure of our home collected credit business in June 2006. We announced theclosure of Imagine Finance, our loan broking business, in July of this year. The well publicised collapse of Farepak Food & Gifts in October last year hashad a dramatic impact on our Christmas savings business. Orders for Christmas2007 are currently 29% below that achieved at the same date last year,reflecting the loss of customer confidence in the industry following that event.However, we have worked closely with the Department for Business, Enterprise andRegulatory Reform to introduce a trust account to provide added security for ourcustomers' prepayments. A new trade body, the Christmas Prepayments Association, has also been formed inwhich we are fully involved. This Association has three independent directorsand three directors from the industry who will monitor the activities of membersand promote the merits of the CPA. We believe that the action we have taken will help to restore customerconfidence in our savings proposition. Recently commissioned independent marketresearch suggested a majority of customers who left due to the impact of Farepakwould consider using our service to save for Christmas again. This isencouraging for the future. Earlier this year we acquired Home Farm Hampers from Findel plc for a cashconsideration of £300,000 on 7 March 2007. Following this acquisition, whichincluded the Farepak agent list, we have the largest database of potentialagents in the company's history. Our corporate voucher sales are trading at similar levels to last year.Encouragingly, revenue from the incentive market is currently 8% above lastyear. In addition, discussions are well advanced regarding the sale of our land atDock Road North, which has a book value of £700,000. We continue to develop our web presence and 21% of our orders were placedon-line last year. The internet is proving to be of substantial benefit to theGroup. We have enhanced our service to customers allowing them to manage theiraccounts on-line. We have also launched an on-line magazine, myparkmag to enableus to communicate with agents and customers more easily. A large proportion ofour corporate voucher leads are also driven from the web. I believe our investment in the web and the large database of potential agents,coupled with the incentive market well served by our brand leading High StreetVouchers, point to an encouraging future. Following this AGM we have convened an EGM to approve the move to theAlternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange. AIM is theUK's leading market for smaller growing companies and the directors believethat, taking account of the market capitalisation of the company, trading on AIMis more likely to bring the company to the attention of specialised mid-marketcompany investors with the potential to improve brokers' coverage of thecompany. A listing on AIM will also reduce the ongoing costs of administration.The company will, however, maintain the high standard of corporate governancerequired for a fully listed company and will continue to abide by all materialaspects of the Combined Code." - ends - For further information please contact: Peter Johnson / Chris Houghton John West / Paul YoungPark Group plc Tavistock CommunicationsTel: 0151 653 1700 Tel: 020 7920 3150 Alex BorrelliShore Capital and Corporate LimitedTel: 020 7408 4090 This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange