St Ives Invests in Incite and Pragma

In the UK, marketing services and print group St. Ives Plc has invested around £1m in additional staff to support future growth plans at its recently acquired market research agency Incite and consumer consultancy Pragma; and says it has plans to finance these businesses further.

St Ives bought Twickenham-based retail and consumer consultancy Pragma a year ago, for an initial £3.3m, rising to a maximum of £6m with payments based on performance. Then in February, the company acquired London-based consumer insights specialist Incite for a total consideration of £14.2m.

During the year, St Ives also acquired data marketing agency Response One for £18.4m, and at the time, CEO Patrick Martell (pictured) described the move as part of a strategy to 'create a complementary range of marketing services, whilst reducing exposure to commoditised print markets'.

In its latest financial report, St Ives says it is 'very pleased' with the quality of the Incite business and that both Pragma and Incite have potential for 'significant growth'.

For the year ended 27 July 2012, revenues from St Ives' Consultancy Services businesses, Pragma and Incite, represented 15.5% of the company's overall Marketing Services revenue of £7.3m (2011: £nil).

For the company as a whole, during the period, St Ives posted a 10.3% rise in underlying revenue to £327.4m (2011: £296.8m), with profit before tax up 15.9% to £24.2m (2011: £20.9m).

Commenting on the results, Martell said: 'We have made continued progress in our transformational plan to build a substantial and broadly-based marketing services offering whilst moving away from commoditised print, and this has resulted in a significantly improved financial performance. We have successfully integrated our three new Marketing Services acquisitions and are pleased with how they have performed to date.'

Web site: www.st-ives.co.uk .