Research Now Hits the Trebles

Online fieldwork provider Research Now has announced its Final Results for the year to 31 October 2006, with turnover nearly trebled to £9.6m (2005: £3.6m) and profit before tax more than trebled to £1.6m (2005: £0.5m).

At 31 October 2006, the Company had cash of £2,381,000, up from around £1.4m a year earlier.

CEO Chris Havemann calls the results for the first year as a public company 'outstanding' and says the year has seen the company emerge as 'a global player with intent'. Chairman Geoff Westmore says the firm has benefited both from organic market growth and increasing market share, and is now turning its focus to the rest of the world. 'The dramatic progress of our American business has been very encouraging – we have gone from a standing start at the beginning of the year to 20 people at the time of writing and see good opportunities in the US for our business model. During 2007 we also plan to expand our reach into other territories.'

The company says all its territories were in profit by the end of the financial year, and that a staff complement of 46 in October 2005 has grown to 145 now.

According to Havemann, repeat business to existing clients represented 61% of turnover during the year, with the balance coming from new clients, while the Group tripled the size of its client base to around 300 clients, from 100 last year. Around 80% of revenues came from custom ad hoc projects; revenues from small and medium sized MR agencies grew from around 50% in 2005 to 55% last year, in keeping with the company's stated strategy. Business with non-MR agency clients continues to grow – principally these are media agencies, advertising agencies, consultancies, international partners and end corporate clients requiring pure fieldwork services - this segment grew from 12% to 20% of Group turnover in 2006.

Looking at half year results, growth has been consistent with £1.26m in the 6 months to end April 2005, £2.4m to October 2005, £3.5m to April 2006 and £6.1m to October 2006. Gross margins improved to 80.7% (2005: 80.3%) due to the reduction in work commissioned from other panel providers and efficiency gains. Operating margin was 16.3% (2005: 14.0%) and EBITDA margin 24.4% (2005: 22.8%).

Research Now owns the 'Valued Opinions' family of online panels across 20 countries – Australia, Russia, and the remainder within Europe – and has 10 offices – London, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Paris, Athens, Sydney and Melbourne. The company is independent and is quoted on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange.

The company is online at www.researchnow.co.uk .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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