WORLD - Centaur Media saw a 15 per cent increase in revenue for the six months ending 31 December 2010.
As stated in the company’s interim results statement, Centaur saw revenues of £27.5m compared to last year’s £23.9m. Of this year’s revenue, £5.5m came from events, up from £4.8m in the same period last year. Centaur’s events saw an overall loss of £600,000, compared to an £800,000 loss for the same period in 2009.
Year-on-year revenues for Centaur’s general business services division, which includes business travel, human resources, recruitment and logistics, dropped six per cent from £3.2m to £3.0m. This was due mainly to the change in timing of the Business Travel Show in Dusseldorf, which will now run in April 2011, and the cancellation of the Enable Show, which ran for the last time a year ago. However the loss was mitigated by a strong performance from the Employee Benefits Live Show in September 2010.
In general, the general business services division was loss-making in the six month period to the end of December because Centaur’s major events run in the second half of the financial year. Overall, events provided 40 per cent of divisional revenue (£1.2m).
Elsewhere, events accounted for 28 per cent of revenue in the company’s construction and engineering division (£1.8m), in part due to the continued recovery of two regional homebuilding shows and a strong performance from the second edition of the National Home Improvement show in October, which experienced a 23 per cent revenue increase.
In the marketing and creative division, events accounted for 15 per cent of divisional revenue (£975,000).
“This is an excellent performance in the first half of our financial year,” said Centaur Media CEO Geoff Wilmot, “with growth returning as our markets recover and the group benefitting from the strong foundations secured in the past two years. We have traded in line with the board’s expectations since the start of 2011.”
These results accord with predictions made in the previous interim management statement, which also warned of remaining uncertainty in the market.
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