- Revenue up 8 per cent to £86.3mn
- Adjusted pre-tax profit falls from £7.9mn to £4.2mn
- Underling EPS down from 6.9p to 3.1p
- Closing net debt of £15.4mn
UK advertising and marketing specialist Mission Group (TMG: 21p) has started the 2024 financial year on a firmer financial footing than many investors feared after last autumn’s profit warning (‘No dividend until 2025: Is Mission Group still a recovery play?’, 23 October 2023).
To date, management have taken £5mn of annualised costs out of the business at a cost of £0.7mn, sold the group’s 80 per cent stake in non-core technology business, Pathfindr, for an initial cash consideration of £1mn along with a three-year earn-out, and refinanced its debt facility with NatWest. True, headline pre-tax profit declined from £7.9mn to £4.2mn, and closing net debt of £15.4mn was £4mn higher than a year before, but both metrics were better than forecast in late October.