Trading update and notice of interim results

The Mission Marketing Group plc 

Trading update and notice of interim results

The Mission Marketing Group plc ("themission", "the Company" or "the Group", AIM: TMMG), the technology-embraced marketing communications and advertising group, today issues a trading update for the six months ended 30 June 2018.

The Board is pleased to report that the Group had an excellent start to the year. With good levels of organic growth, new business wins and progress made with our Shared Services project, we again expect to report strong double digit growth in headline profit before tax for the first half of 2018 and a continued increase in profit margins. Recent acquisition, krow Communications, has settled in well and is generating excellent referral opportunities for other Group Agencies. We are delighted that krow has also recently been shortlisted for an IPA Effectiveness Award (considered to be the most demanding and prestigious Advertising Awards in the world) for its work for DFS.

The Group's balance sheet remains strong. Following a period of exceptionally favourable working capital reduction towards the end of 2017, we have seen some expected unwinding of that position in the first half of the year which, after making acquisition consideration payments totalling £4.5m in the period, resulted in net bank debt of £8.4m (31 December 2017: £7.2m). The Group's net bank debt leverage ratio (the ratio of net bank debt to EBITDA) remained below x1 at 30 June 2018 (31 December 2017: x0.8).

In common with recent years, we expect our results for the year to 31 December 2018 to again have a significant bias towards the second half and we look forward to further progress over the remainder of the year.

The Group expects its interim results, for the six months ended 30 June 2018, to be announced on 19 September.

Enquiries:

themission is a network of entrepreneurial marketing communications Agencies employing over 1,000 people in the UK, Asia and US, working together to provide Clients with the expertise and resource to make them more successful in today's dynamic environment.

www.themission.co.uk