News blog

Freshwater UK

  • BY: Andrew Hore |
  • POSTED: 01/12/2008 |

PR firm Freshwater UK generated 9% organic growth in the year to August 2008.

Overall revenues grew by 61% to £7.51m, helped by acquisitions. These new additions widened the portfolio of sectors and increased work with utilities, transport and the public sector. National Grid is the biggest customer and accounts for more than 3% of turnover. New work has been won with the Central Office of Information.

The weakness in the property sector was spotted early by Freshwater because of its knowledge of the sector. However, it was not fast enough to prevent a £156,000 bad debt from a failed property client. That client had paid more than £50,000 the month before. The bad debt was high because Freshwater was involved in media buying for the client. It no longer does media buying for customers, other than blue chip companies and the public sector.

Freshwater increased its profits by 27% to £1.17m, which is after the bad debt and a £127,000 property gain. The shares issued in the July 2007 flotation have diluted the earnings per share from 9.66pto 6.26p. A final dividend of 1.5p a share takes the total payout to 3p a share.

Net cash is £38,000. There are still £1.1m of earn outs payable in cash and shares. Freshwater says that its bank is still prepared to back acquisitions.

October was a tough month and projects have been put on hold. Cost savings will help to reduce the effect of the weak first quarter. The rest of the year should be better.

The shares fell 6p to 41.5p a share after the results were announced and that values Freshwater at £5.42m. The shares are trading on less than seven times earnings. 

© 2024 Aim Micro. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Browse by issue
All issues
Popular tags
All tags

betbrokers, financial, gold, health, leisure, media, mobile, resources, services, technology

AIM Micro feeds

Keep up to date with articles published at AIMMicro.com. Subscribe to AIM Micro RSS Feeds