Marketing Week and E-consultancy publisher Centaur reports flat group revenue following 15% financial portfolio decline
Centaur, the publisher behind Marketing Week and E-consultancy, has reported a flat rate in growth of group revenue at £24.4m for the first four months of the year following a rise in paid-for content revenue of 13 per cent and a 15 per cent decline in the revenue generated by its financial portfolio.
For first quarter results for 2014, the company has reported that advertising and events revenue were “impacted by weakness” across its financial portfolio where it saw revenue decline by 15 per cent at £4.6m in comparison with the same period the previous year.
Excluding the financial portfolio however, the publisher saw group revenue grow by 5 per cent.
Marketing revenue grew by 4 per cent to £7.1m year-on-year, while paid content revenue was up by 37 per cent to £1.6m and E-consultancy contract values increased by over a third (37 per cent).
Andria Vidler, CEO of Centaur, commented: "Although we are going through a period of rapid change, our audiences remain at the heart of our business. We are passionate about delivering excellent content to enable them to become better at what they do.
"We know that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and by bringing together our range of complementary products under market portfolio management, we can deliver the clearest insight, a better audience experience and robust operational efficiency.
"As the pace of growth in our core digital, paid-for content revenues continues to accelerate, we have identified a number of opportunities to use the technical functionality that underpins these revenues more widely across the Group.
"The operational changes introduced over the last few months are showing visible strategic progress. This is enabling us to tackle historical issues swiftly, refresh underperforming products and revitalise our commercial leadership. We expect all of these changes to contribute to a stronger performance in the second half of 2014,” she concluded.
The group has also announced the agreement to sell Perfect Information for £26m to Mergermarket, explaining that the single format title no longer fitted the company’s market.
Meanwhile, Centaur has also conditionally agreed to settle the earn-out entitled of the former shareholders of E-Consultancy for £12.5m in cash.