Park Group pleased with first half progress

PARK Group, the North West Christmas savings and prepaid card business, has delivered a strong first half, with losses falling and customer billings and revenues rising.

The Birkenhead company, which due to its highly seasonal nature, usually makes a first half loss, said the prospects for the full year were strong after a strong performance across the group in the six months to the end of September.

Chairman and founder Peter Johnson described the performance as “excellent” as customer billings rose 12%  to £54.6m, revenue ticked-up 2% to £46.9m and pre-tax losses fell from £4.4m last year to £4.1m.

Mr Johnson, who in the last year as moved from an executive to non-executive role, has also halved his stake in the AIM-listed business from 65.48% to 29.95%, increasing the liquidity of Park’s stock and attracting new institutional investors.

Park said the reason its billings figure was higher than revenue as a result of the accounting treatment of its flexecash prepaid card product.

Corporate and consumer businesses billings well ahead of last year. Corporate increased 11% to £46.2m while consumer rose 24% to £8.5m.

The flexecash maintained its rapid sales growth rate – more than £140m of value has been loaded on to the platform  since its launch in 2010

Chief executive Chris Houghton told TheBusinessDesk.com he is pleased with progress and “comfortable” with City forecasts which expect annual pre-tax profits to increase from £8.5m to £9.5m.

“We have seen growth in all parts of the business in the first half and sales have continued well in the second half. We have already launched advertising campaigns in the UK and Ireland for Christmas savings for 2013 and we’ve had a substantial amount of orders.”

Mr Johnson added: “The combination of technological advances and marketing initiatives, together with the bedrock of our traditional business, gives us real confidence in the continued growth of Park.”