Personal Group Regulatory News (PGH)

Press Release

Personal Group Holding PLC

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

Trading Update

Personal Group PLC, a leading provider of employee services in the UK, provides the following trading update.

The Company's core insurance business continues to perform well, having made an encouraging start to the second half of the year. The SME offer, through the partnership with Sage, is exceeding management's expectations and other SaaS sales of the Hapi platform remain strongly up on last year, including an additional 14,000 SaaS licences since June this year. The Company's new financial wellbeing product, including affordable loans, has also made an encouraging start.

The Company's salary sacrifice business continues to benefit from the recent clarity and greater simplicity of tax treatment as a result of the Finance Bill earlier this year. However, a key salary sacrifice customer has informed the Company that for its own short term operational reasons, it, like a few other customers, will now delay the planned offering to its employees into next year. The salary sacrifice revenue from these customers is expected to be unchanged in the next six months with the delay only affecting the timing and not the value of the proposition. 

As a result, Group revenue for the current year is now expected to be lower than reported for full year 2016. Despite this impact to revenue, the ongoing strength of the core insurance business and the recent traction across the Hapi platform, alongside the Group's focus on cost control, provides continued confidence that the Group will meet its full year EBITDA profit expectations.

Mark Scanlon, Chief Executive of Personal Group, commented:

"Despite this short-term revenue impact, the underlying business is in a strong position, giving us confidence that the Group will meet full year EBITDA profit expectations. The Group offer is better placed than ever as we enter 2018. The core insurance business continues to deliver and we look forward to seeing continued growth from our SaaS offer, both in SME and beyond."

-ENDS-

Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) Disclosure

Certain information contained in this announcement would have been deemed inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 until the release of this announcement.

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Notes to Editors:

Personal Group Holdings Plc (AIM: PGH) is a technology enabled employee services business, working with employers to drive productivity though better employee engagement and a more motivated workforce. With over 30 years' experience, the Company provides employee benefits, serving 550 businesses, reaching over 2 million employees across the UK.

Personal Group's offer comprises 8,000 in-house and third party products and services, from c.60 supply lines. In-house services include employee insurance products (hospital, convalescence plans and death benefit) and the provision of home technology via salary sacrifice (iPads, computers, laptops, smart phones and smart TVs). Third party services include retail discounts, e-payslips, employee assistance, wellbeing programmes and salary sacrifice cars and bikes.

The offer is provided via the Company's proprietary technology platform, Hapi. The platform is intuitive and accessible via web, tablet and mobile app, driving better engagement, communication and value recognition. Hapi is flexible and can quickly integrate additional services, such as existing employee services and partner platforms. Hapi is a SaaS product.

Through technology and select acquisitions, the Company has grown its addressable market from 6m to 27m UK employees; including 15.6m SME employees targeted via its partnership with Sage, the UK's largest software company.

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 offer compelling to blue chip clients across the UK as a way of attracting, retaining and motivating employees. 

Personal Group has a strong client base across a range of sectors including passenger transport, healthcare, logistics and food manufacturing. Clients include: Stagecoach, Four Seasons Health Care, Priory Group, Spire Healthcare, Bibby, 2 Sisters Food Group and Young's Seafood.

For further information, please see www.personalgroup.com