29th Sep 2015 13:01
LONDON (Alliance News) - Education consultancy AEC Education PLC on Tuesday posted a wider pretax loss for the first half as a tough London market continued to eat into revenue, saying it has put plans in place which it thinks will result in improvements emerging in 2016.
AEC said its pretax loss for the six months to the end of June was GBP520,000, compared to a GBP100,000 loss a year earlier, as revenue fell to GBP3.6 million from GBP4.3 million.
AEC said its Irish, Malaysian and Cypriot joint ventures all have continued to contribute to its profit, but its London market remains in decline and delivered losses in the first six months. The group said revenue in London has been severely hit by the change in immigration policy related to the ability of non-EU students to work and the continued tightening of student visa controls.
In order to cope with these issues, AEC has commenced a programme to widen its revenue base to cater for students outside the visa-working requirements. This started in September, and AEC expects this to show some progress in the second half. It has also started talks with a number of parties about developing online teaching platforms as a supplement to traditional teaching methods.
AEC said it thinks that from early 2016 on its new initiatives will start to pay dividends.
"The group's results for the six months ended 30 June 2015 were disappointing with London and, to a lesser extent, Singapore, offsetting the total gains generated by all the other operating units. We have initiated and implemented a number of strategic plans for these two units to gain traction in student acquisition. These positive measures will start to take effect from the latter months of 2015 and continue into 2016 and beyond," said Chairman Liam Swords.
AEC shares were untraded on Tuesday, having last traded at 2.08 pence.
By Sam Unsted; [email protected]; @SamUAtAlliance
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