Strong profits mean Christmas comes early for Park Group
Park Group, the Birkenhead-based gift voucher and prepaid gift card business, is celebrating another year of increased profits and says sales for Christmas 2017 are already up on last year.
The stock market listed group announced that chief executive Chris Houghton plans to retire next year, as it posted pre-tax profits growth of 4.2% to £12.4m on billings that increased 5.1% to £404.5m for the year to the end of March 2017.
Houghton, 60, has been with the business for 30 years and Park has given itself plenty of time to find the right successor as he will remain in post for at least the next year.
Houghton told TheBusinessDesk: “It has been a great year for us and we have made great progress. We have invested in new products and systems and apps to help grow the business in the future.”
The company has particularly invested in international expansion as a route to future growth – since the year end it expanded its corporate incentives division to offer its rewards products to a worldwide audience, setting up Love2Shop Worldwide.
The initiative allows the expansion of Park’s UK-based digital reward platform, ‘Evolve’, which has attracted 165 blue-chip, household name businesses and organisations since its launch in June 2016.
The international service has been offered to Park’s existing UK corporate clients who have employees and customers overseas, before meeting wider market demand and actively promoting the service in new territories, it said.
The other significant development has been its approval as a Mastercard licence holder, giving its customers to spend prepaid cards anywhere online or in store.
“At the level we are selling it made sense to do it ourselves. It means that as we develop products we can do so quickly and got to the market quickly without having to go through third parties – it gives us lots of opportunities,” said Houghton.
He added that it is a “logical pathway” into Europe for the company and a means to build the customer base overseas.
“We are still focussing on the UK but there is an opportunity for more growth in Europe,” Houghton said.
Over the year, the number of customer accounts grew by 6.3% to over 168,000 and customer numbers rose to 431,000 while the average customer order value improved 3.9% to £508.
Laura Carstensen, chairman, said: “We will continue to deliver against our strategy, focusing on excellent customer service and product innovation, to grow our customer bases and broaden the range of products and services we can offer to them.”
The total dividend for the year was up 5.5% to 2.90p a share.
