BONH.L Regulatory News (BONH)

1 Jul 2005 15:41

Vitesse Media PLC01 July 2005 Vitesse Media plc ('Vitesse' or 'the Company') AGM Statement Vitesse Media plc, the AIM listed online and print media business specialisingin growth companies, held its Annual General Meeting today and all resolutionswere duly passed. At the meeting, Chairman Sara Williams made the followingstatement: Vitesse is a fully-fledged multi-platform media business with a commitment bothto inform and entertain. It continues to make good progress towards becoming thedominant one-stop shop for growing businesses, from pre-start-up all the way upto the FTSE 350, providing products and services for entrepreneurs, CEO's,investors (venture capital, institutional investors and high net worthindividuals), intermediaries and advisers such as brokers, corporate financiers,solicitors, accountants and other professionals. We also have a vast portfolio of intellectual property assets, such as brandnames and titles, owned events, subscription bases and databases, which weactively develop. Furthermore, revenues from subscriptions and sponsorships giveus a strong positive cash flow, as well as from advertising, product sales andlist sales. During the current year we have embarked on a major programme of infrastructure,website and new event product development. To date, major improvements have beenmade in our IT infrastructure, two websites have been redesigned and re-launchedand two new events have been profitably established. In detail: •GrowthBusiness.co.uk and GrowthCompany.co.uk have been redesigned and re-launched. We are currently working on the redesign of SmallBusiness.co.uk and later in the year TheWrongPrice.com will be refreshed. The operational efficiencies and more effective marketing resulting from this work should increase subscriptions. Already, since its re-launch in mid June we have seen a trebling of traffic to GrowthCompany.co.uk. •Media and Money, a summit for the media sector promoted under the BusinessXL brand, was run in April (the 2006 summit will be in February 2006, see MediaAndMoney.co.uk) and in June our day-long show for investors and companies in the smallcap sector, the Growth Company Investor Show, was held for the first time. Both events were successful and attracted a range of strong supporters and sponsors (The Times, The Independent, London Stock Exchange, Quoted Company Alliance, APCIMS, BDO Stoy Hayward and Osborne Clarke). We were particularly delighted with the Show as we attracted 45 small cap companies to exhibit and 1,000 plus visitors were registered, including a wide range of professional investors Trading in the current financial year has been mixed. February and May traded tobudget, while March and April were below. Common to the rest of the mediasector, advertising is less buoyant than we might have hoped; however, it is tooearly in the year to know whether this pattern will continue. We are in any caseencouraged that our two big events in the second half (Investor All Stars andQuoted Company Awards) are already well ahead of revenues compared with the lastyear. We are planning a further three events in the second half of the year,including a Directors' Summit and The AIM Finance Directors Forum in November,while continuing with our range of seminars and research documents. New researchtopics have already been developed this year with a range of prestigious newsponsors including KPMG, Nabarro Nathanson and Ernst & Young.As foreshadowed in our statement with the preliminary results, the first half ofthe financial year will absorb the effect of a substantial reduction in revenuesfrom Lloyds TSB's purchases of the Small Business Guide and Tax Guide and thebusiness as a whole will report a loss at the interim stage. However, we havereached agreement with a major newspaper to brand these products and continue totalk to two FTSE 100 companies with a view to sponsoring the next edition of theSmall Business Guide. We anticipate that we will be able to rebuild revenuesfrom these two products over the medium term. Against a backdrop of uncertain trading in the media sector, the outlook forrevenues in the current financial year remains promising and we expect stronggrowth. As a result of the work this year, we will have a streamlined andefficient organisation, with a well-established and profitable set of productswith considerable growth potential for 2006 and beyond. The right structure willbe in place by the year-end and as we scale the business there will be adisproportionately greater effect on margins. We continue to actively seek acquisitions and recently carried out due diligenceon what would have been a reverse acquisition. However, we were not able toagree terms for the business. Several new targets have been identified and arebeing researched. * * ENDS * * Contacts:Sara Williams Vitesse Media Tel: 020 7430 9777Isabel Crossley St Brides Media Tel: 020 7242 4477 This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange