Personal Group Regulatory News (PGH)

PERSONAL GROUP HOLDINGS PLC

("Personal Group", "Company" or "Group")

Preliminary Results

For the Year Ended 31 December 2016

Personal Group Holdings Plc, a leading provider of employee services in the UK, is pleased to announce its Preliminary Results for the year to 31 December 2016.

Highlights

Financial

· Group revenue of £53.6m (continuing operations) (2015: £58.0m)

· EBITDA of £11.4m (continuing operations) (2015: £12.6m)

· Dividend increased by 5.3% to 22p

· Strong balance sheet and no debt

Operational

· Fourth successive year of record new insurance sales

· Successfully managed Let's Connect through significant fiscal change

· Accessed SME market opportunity through 'Hapi' technology platform

· Signed agreement with Sage to access expanding market opportunity

· Won Royal Mail Group as a significant Let's Connect client - biggest contract of its type

· Strengthened product offer to support increased take up and client retention

Commenting, Mark Scanlon, Chief Executive of Personal Group, said:

"While 2016 brought about some challenges for the Group, we are now better placed than ever to take advantage of the opportunity that now exists within our market place. The market we face today has changed and it was recognising that change that drove the strategy we have adopted and delivered on since. The shape of the business now reflects the current and future demands of clients; recent investments allow us to deliver an industry leading platform and a strong, comprehensive and flexible product offer, underpinned by an established supply chain and access to a significantly expanded market opportunity."

For more information please contact:

Notes to editors:

With over 30 years' experience of looking after its customers' employees, Personal Group Holdings Plc (AIM: PGH) is a leading provider of employee benefits and employee related insurance products, offering benefits programmes to over 2 million employees across the UK.

Personal Group's innovative approach to using technology to deliver its programmes, combined with its face-to-face method of communicating with employees, makes its offering compelling to blue chip clients across the UK as a way of attracting, retaining and motivating employees. The Group tailors its packages to include insurance products such as hospital and convalescence plans, death benefit and income protection plans, as well as lifestyle benefits such as holiday and retail discounts, health and wellbeing benefits and a range of tax efficient benefits.

Personal Group can also supply home technology via salary sacrifice through Let's Connect. Offering the latest iPads and other tablets, home computers and laptops, smart phones and smart TVs is a highly engaging benefit. 

Personal Group has a strong client base across a range of sectors including transport, where it works with the likes of Network Rail, Stagecoach and EYMS Group Ltd, and healthcare, where clients include Four Seasons Health Care, Priory Group and Spire Healthcare. The Group also covers logistics, with companies such as TNT Express and Bibby, and motoring with Manheim and JCT600 as clients. In addition, the Group also has a strong presence in food manufacturing and service and clients include 2 Sisters Food Group and Young's Seafood. 

With over 520 clients the Group has grown considerably and provides engaging and effective employee services across a breadth of sectors. 

For further information, please see www.personalgroup.com

Preliminary Results Statement

Introduction

Despite 2016 being a challenging year for the Group, we are now better positioned than ever to take advantage of the opportunity that exists within our market place.

In line with our strategy, the shape of the business has changed over recent years and now far better reflects the needs of the market we face today. The Group is well positioned to realise the benefits of its investments with an industry leading platform, a comprehensive product offer, supply chain (which includes its insurance offering) and a significantly expanded market opportunity.

Personal Group is now at the vanguard of an emerging employee services market, much broader and more demanding than the insurance market in which it started.

Business Review

The Group's core insurance business continued to perform extremely well, achieving its fourth consecutive year of record new sales. At the same time, our technology salary sacrifice business, Let's Connect, had a more challenging year, as a result of the short-term impact given the uncertainty surrounding the HMRC review into salary sacrifice.

The insurance business saw revenue increase by 2.3% to £31.2m (2015: £30.5m). This was achieved despite a further increase in Insurance Premium Tax, which was absorbed rather than passed on to existing policyholders.

The success of the insurance business is based on the strength of our client base which includes many of the UK's leading companies and the successful development of new clients. It is underpinned by the Group's approach of face to face sales and the speed with which claims are managed; this keeps the client and policy holder at the centre of what we do. This approach drives a sales uptake, or conversion rate, of 51%, which is unique to the industry. It also, we believe, leads to low cancellation rates, with the average length of a policy being 5 years, leading to lower costs and better quality of earnings.

As part of the Group's drive to ensure continued client satisfaction, we invested in a system of post insurance sales surveys and strengthened our customer relations team by adding additional capacity during the year. The response rates to the surveys have been more than 30%, demonstrating the level of engagement and interest achieved. This constructive insight, combined with a regular review of any complaints, is used to guide the actions we take to improve our services.

Let's Connect saw revenue decrease by 21.2% to £20.1m (2015: £25.5m) as a short-term consequence of the uncertainty caused by the HMRC salary sacrifice consultation. Nonetheless, as an acquisition it has been highly successful, growing revenues by over 18% since it was acquired in 2014 and we anticipate payback in less than four years.

The key attractions of the Let's Connect offer is a combination of convenience, access to finance via the employer, no upfront costs, affordability and trusted provision from the employer. On this basis, we have every confidence of seeing this business return to growth. Testament to this was the signing of our largest contract ever against challenging deadlines, with Royal Mail Group, in October 2016.

The key challenge that faced the Let's Connect business during the year was the impact of the HMRC review into salary sacrifice. Although we believe the review, and changes now outlined in the Finance Bill, have minimal impact on the Let's Connect offer, the uncertainty created by the review caused some clients to delay their contract decision in 2016. This unfortunately came at a key point in the sales cycle, having a disproportionate impact.

Although frustrating in the short term, we welcome the clarification the Finance Bill brings and look forward to growing this business. During the HMRC review process, we worked hard to ensure the Group's perspective was highlighted, working alongside industry bodies and making direct representation to Government to make our voice heard at the highest level.

At the same time, we took the opportunity to re-craft our product offer; making it more attractive, by being easier to understand for both the employee and employer. The focus of this work was around product retention and final payments.

Sales of our technology platform, Hapi, as a subscription product - software as a service (SaaS) - increased substantially, with 69 clients now taking up the service, representing an increase of 43 additional clients. While, in overall terms, SaaS sales remain relatively small at this point, we expect it to become an increasing part of the broader sales mix.

The agreement signed with Sage, the UK's largest listed technology company, represents a significant long term opportunity for both companies. It provides Personal Group with an effective means of targeting and developing the SME market through Sage's existing product offer and strength across that market. Sage has shown real commitment to supporting the agreement, with Personal Group employees seconded directly to work alongside them at their offices in Newcastle. With over 15.6m people employed by SMEs in the UK, we look forward to seeing this relationship and opportunity develop over the course of this year and beyond.

As announced in the interim results, in July 2016 we took the decision to close our Mobile Virtual Network Operator, PG Mobile. It had become increasingly evident that the mobile operators had decoupled the provision of handsets from their airtime contracts, changing the market that PG Mobile was targeting. Consequently, the investment required by this part of our business exceeded the revised returns to the Group and we decided that such investment would be better focused elsewhere.

Delivering our strategy

The marketplace we face today has changed beyond all recognition from the one we operated in when the business started. It was recognition of that change that has driven the strategy we have adopted and have progressively delivered on since.

A core part of that strategy has been to develop both our product mix, including those provided directly and through third parties, and to expand the market available to us. Over the four years since we adopted the strategy, we have achieved this through a combination of technology, acquisitions and organic growth.

Technology is now a tremendous enabler for us and our clients. The launch of our proprietary platform, Hapi, in 2015 gives us the ability to deliver the wider services and efficiencies, including improved functionality and accessibility, greater accountability and employee recognition our corporate clients are now demanding.

Through Hapi, the value of our product offer has increased and we are able to adapt our offer to better suit specific client needs. We now have a product offer to suit almost every possible client, comprising over 8,000 offers from circa 60 supply lines, including our own insurance and Let's Connect products, brought together in one simple and easy to use platform that is readily accessible by App, PC or tablet.

The development of our platform has also brought about a step change in our business that greatly expands our available market to circa 27 million UK employees, over 85% of the UK working population. The platform is sold as a SaaS product, complementing the core insurance business and opening up large traditional clients and smaller SMEs alike and generating revenues in its own right.

At the same time, we have not lost sight of our unique approach of combining technology with face to face communication. We have a dynamic field based team that meets over 165,000 individuals a year. This approach not only supports a better take up of our products but also ensures better customer satisfaction, which in turn supports the quality of our revenue streams. The efforts of our salesforce in 2016 will bear fruit long into the future.

Financial Performance

Group revenue for the year for continuing operations was £53.6m (2015: £58.0m). This was driven by another strong result from our core insurance business offset by weaker revenue from Let's Connect, due to the short term impact of the HMRC review. Revenue was also affected by the change in the relationship with Royal Mail Group, with the cessation of face to face sales to their employees by all insurance providers but the winning of RMG was a very significant new client for Let's Connect.

During the year we saw a further increase in Insurance Premium Tax, from 9.5% to 10% in October, and experienced the full year impact of the prior year increase from 6% to 9.5%. We took the decision not to pass the increase onto existing policy holders, impacting top line revenues and resulting profits.

EBITDA was 9.5% lower at £11.4m (2015: £12.6m). This reflects the resilience of the higher margin core insurance business, despite the impact of the HMRC review on revenues from the lower margin Let's Connect business, combined with the upfront investment in developing the SME market opportunity, the first deployment of which is with Sage.

Profit before tax was £10.5m (2015: £14.1m). During the year, we again increased the dividend, taking it to 22p or a 5.3% increase. This increase is part of our progressive dividend policy and is based on continued strong cash generation. It is also a reflection of our confidence in the future potential of the business.

Outlook

We started 2017 in a strong position to see the business grow in the year ahead. There remains a number of uncertainties, including the rate of takeup of our SME offer, but, with a strong offer to clients, we have already seen an uptick in our Let's Connect business and sales in our core insurance business continue to perform well.

Looking further ahead we expect technology to continue to play a key role as the market develops from one of employee benefits to employee services. The value of an employee benefits offer will increasingly shift from the provision of certain benefits to being able to offer an effective means of engagement and support for corporate clients and their employees. It is this progressive shift away from pure employee benefits to employee and business services that is at the very heart of how the Group will support clients and employees alike - driving greater employee satisfaction, improved productivity, cost efficiencies and investment returns.

Personal Group is better placed than ever to take advantage of the significant opportunities that are open to us. By design, the strength of our product offer is unique and ahead of the market, placing us in a strong position to manage current and future client demands; we have greatly expanded our market opportunity to over 85% of the UK's working population. At the same time, the opportunity this presents remains underpinned by strong cash generation from our core business, the breadth of experience across the team and the established partnerships, technology, and infrastructure we have in place. The business model we have developed is both an investment in our business today and central to our ability to grow the business into the future.

Consolidated income statement

Consolidated statement of comprehensive income

The total comprehensive income for the year is attributable to equity holders of Personal Group Holdings Plc. 

Consolidated balance sheet at 31 December 2016

Consolidated balance sheet at 31 December 2016

The financial statements were approved by the board on 27 March 2017.

M I Dugdale

M W Scanlon

Company number: 3194991

Consolidated statement of changes in equity for the year ended 31 December 2016

Equity attributable to equity holders of Personal Group Holdings Plc

*All Employee Share Option Plan (AESOP)

**Long Term Incentive Plan (LTIP)

Consolidated statement of changes in equity for the year ended 31 December 2015

Equity attributable to equity holders of Personal Group Holdings Plc

*All Employee Share Option Plan (AESOP)

**Long Term Incentive Plan (LTIP)

Company and Consolidated Cash Flow Statement

Notes to the financial statements

1 Segment analysis

The four continuing trading operating segments are:

1) Core Insurance

Personal Assurance Plc (PA), a subsidiary within the Group, is a PRA regulated general insurance company and is authorised to transact accident and sickness insurance. It was established in 1984 and has been underwriting business since 1985. In 1997 Personal Group Holdings Plc (PGH) was created and became the ultimate parent undertaking of the Group.

This operating segment derives the majority of its revenue from the underwriting by PA of insurance policies that have been bought by employees of host companies via bespoke benefit programmes.

Up until March 2015 insurance related income represented commission receivable for death benefit policies underwritten by 3rd parties. From March 2015 these policies have been underwritten by the Group's subsidiary Personal Assurance (Guernsey) Limited (PAGL) and, as such, their income now falls within earned premium.

2) IT Salary Sacrifice

IT salary sacrifice refers to the trade of Lets Connect a salary sacrifice technology company purchased in 2014.

3) SME

SME has been classified as a separate segment as the development and expansion into the SME market is currently managed and maintained as a separate activity to Core Insurance and Other. Revenue in this sector is based on a SaaS model for a product that combines insurance and employee benefit platform income.

4) Other

The other operating segment consists exclusively of revenue generated by Personal Management Solutions (PMS) and Berkeley Morgan Group (BMG) and its subsidiary undertakings

PMS is an employee benefit company that offers a variety of employee incentive schemes normally via annual subscriptions and includes income generated from the Hapi platform.

BMG was acquired by PGH in January 2005 and generates commission via financial services and private medical insurance. As described in note 3b this business is being transferred to AXA PPP healthcare.

The discontinued segment is

Mobile

Mobile refers to the trade of Personal Group Mobile a mobile phone salary sacrifice company set up from the trade and assets of Shebang Technologies purchased in 2015.

Notes to the financial statements

1 Segmental analysis

The revenue and net result generated by each of the group's operating segments are summarised as follows:

All income is derived from the UK and Guernsey.

Notes to the financial statements

All income is derived from the UK and Guernsey.

Notes to the financial statements

2 Discontinued Operation

As announced in July 2016, following a review of PG Mobile, the Group's Mobile Virtual Network Operator ("MVNO"), the Group concluded that the potential market had changed and was no longer receptive to the product offering and, as such, decided to close the business by the end of 2016. This was successfully completed by the end of the year and no further costs in respect of this business are anticipated for 2017.

The loss from the discontinued operations of £1,758,000 (2015: loss of £3,649,000) is attributable entirely to the owners of the Company

3. Taxation comprises United Kingdom corporation tax of £1,111,000 (2015: £1,446,000) and a deferred tax charge of £368,000 (2015: credit of £298,000)

4. The basic and diluted earnings per share are based on profit for the financial year of £7,284,000 (2015: £9,301,000) and on 30,442,426 basic (2015: 30,200,755) and 31,191,978 diluted (2014: 32,598,684) ordinary shares, the weighted average number of shares in issue during the year.

5.  The total dividend paid in the year was £6,697,000 (2015: £6,325,000)

This preliminary statement has been extracted from the 2016 audited financial statements that will be posted to shareholders in due course. The statutory accounts for each of the two years to 31 December 2015 and 31 December 2014 received audit reports, which were unqualified and did not contain statements under section 498 (2) or (3) of the Companies Act 2006. The 2015 accounts have been filed with the Registrar of Companies but the 2016 accounts are not yet filed.