21st Oct 2013 07:18
LONDON (Alliance News) - Informa PLC said Monday that it was confident it would meet full-year expectations following a strong third quarter. The company said that its cash performance remained on track, and the sales of its five Corporate Training businesses had generated proceeds of around USD100 million, which it had used to pay off debt.
In an interim management statement for the nine months ended September 30, the events and publishing company said that its organic revenue growth was 1.1%. In its Academic Information division like-for-like revenue growth was 4.0%, reflecting good performance by its books and journals businesses.
Professional and Commercial Information Division revenue declined 3.6%, the company said, which was an improvement from the 4.1% decline it reported in its half year results.
This includes the impact of product pruning that Informa completed in 2012, leading to lost revenue of GBP6 million. The company says that market backdrop remains tough for this sector, but it had seen gradual signs of improvement.
In its events division, the company said that it had run only a few large events in the third quarter, which had done well. Informa said that its outlook for events in the fourth quarter remained good, but small events continued to be challenging, particularly in Europe where demand was low.
"It has been a solid quarter for the group with good performances in each division ensuring positive organic growth across the first nine months of the year, despite the absence of our Brazillian biennial exhibition in 2013," Chief Executive Peter Rigby said in a statement.
Shares in Informa traded up 2.1% at the open Monday, at 554.00 pence.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; [email protected]; @HanaSSAllNews
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