GRA.L Regulatory News (GRA)

28 Jul 2006 07:01

Printing.com plc28 July 2006 FOR RELEASE 7.00AM 28 July 2006 PRINTING.COM PLC ("Printing.com" or "the Company") AGM Statement George Hardie, the Chairman of Printing.com, will make the following comments oncurrent trading at the Annual General Meeting to be held at 11.00am inManchester today: Current Trading When reporting the Company's preliminary results in early June 2006, we referredto current trading being mixed. Subsequently, trading has proved soft, resultingin transactional volumes below expectations albeit still ahead of last year.Trading in the printing sector at large is presently reported as beingdifficult. Ordinarily Printing.com has been able to mitigate such problems.However, this has been hampered due to resource being diverted in the short termtowards the major Hub development project designed to expand capacity, fromcirca £20-25m to £40-45m of Total Retail Sales ("TRS"). The project is now significantly progressed and it is anticipated that it willbe completed imminently. Post this the Company will enjoy an abundance ofadditional capacity circa £20m TRS. Despite our significant confidence in the Printing.com business model into themedium and long term, we feel that it is appropriate to take a cautious viewregarding market expectations in the short term. UK and Ireland Network Development Further progress has been made in relation to franchise roll-out. When we lastupdated the market, the Bradford and Peterborough Territory Franchises werereported as operational, however, they were then trading from temporarypremises. Since then Store premises have been secured and the shop fittingcompleted. The Bradford franchise has commenced trading from its new retail unitwith Peterborough to follow suit on 1 August. Additionally, property has nowbeen secured for the Clerkenwell & City Territory Franchise with a launchexpected late August. Also an additional 6 Bolt-on franchise Agreements have been completed. We expecta further wave of Bolt-on franchise agreements to complete before the close ofH1. International Development Promising progress has also been made on the International expansion. An option over Poland involving the payment of a non-refundable deposit has beengranted to one of Poland's most successful commercial printers. The business,which currently specialises in prestigious commercial work, has a printingfacility embracing the necessary plant to operate a Printing.com Hub. A management team from Astra, the owner of the Printing.com Master Licence forNew Zealand has almost completed its UK training. Installation of the 'system'and local support in New Zealand will commence mid-August and run for a numberof weeks. Other encouraging discussions continue with a number of companies throughoutEurope. Outlook Whilst the Hub upgrade has caused disruption we believe that without embarkingon this path potential earnings growth from the UK & Ireland operations wouldhave been restrained. We believe that the recent soft trading is a temporarymatter and that we will be able to increase volumes and exploit this capacitymoving forward. Outside of the UK, by September 2006, the first New Zealand print orders arescheduled to be controlled via Printing.com's Flyerlink software, and NewZealand franchisees developed via its systems resulting in the first MasterLicence royalties being generated. We believe this bodes well for internationaldevelopment. The Board remains confident of the long term growth of your Company. For further information: Printing.com plc Tony Rafferty (Chief Executive) 07966 517 336Alan Roberts (Finance Director) 0161 848 5713 Cubitt Consulting Brian Coleman-Smith / Allison Reid / Nia Thomas 020 7367 5100 This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange