Park Group on high as profits and billings soar

BIRKENHEAD-based  Park Group is celebrating soaring profits and revenue in its final results for the year ended March 31.

The online business which supplies gift vouchers and prepaid gift cards direct to customers, has reported a 16% growth in pre-tax profits to £10.9m (2014: £9.4m) and an 11% advance in “billings” to £372.9m (2014: 336m), which the company says is a more realistic test of its performance than revenue.

However, revenue has also increased by 11% to £293.3m (2014: 269.6m).

“We had a good start to the year and it continued through Christmas and the New Year,” chief executive Chris Houghton told TheBusinessDesk.com.

“This is thanks to combination of the development of new products and lower costs for voluntary staff benefits and things like enhanced capability helped by the digital delivery of gift vouchers.

“We have been able to go new markets and we have been developing relationships with retailers.”

The company has announced proposed final dividend of 1.60p per share taking the total dividend for the year to 2.40p per share (2014 – 2.30p per share), a rise of 4.3%.

Houghton added: “The results for the year reflect the robustness of our business model and the successful implementation of our consistent strategy, which has four key aims – to enhance our retailer proposition, to grow our multichannel offering, to expand the customer base to develop and exploit our infrastructure.

“Trading momentum is continuing in the current year, which has started strongly.  We look forward with confidence and anticipate another period of sustained growth.”

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