9th Sep 2014 09:28
LONDON (Alliance News) - IT recruitment firm InterQuest Group PLC Tuesday posted higher profit and revenue for the first half of 2014, driven by positive momentum in its contract and permanent businesses.
The company gave a confident outlook for the remainder of the year and declared an interim dividend of 0.5 pence, unchanged from previous years.
"We enter the second half of 2014 with a contract book that has grown organically by 12.7% in the first half of the year and with positive momentum in our permanent recruitment business. Consequently, we are confident of further success in the second half of the year and beyond," said Chief Executive Officer Mark Braund in a statement.
Its pretax profit for the six months to June 30 was GBP1.6 million, up from GBP1.2 million a year earlier, while revenue in the period rose to GBP73.0 million, up from GBP56.2 million in the first half of 2013.
The company said its continued strength in developing specialist niche markets is driving growth and improvements in profitability, while its recent revamp, combined with growing confidence in the economic outlook, continues to underpin its optimism for the year.
"Our focus on specialist disciplines in key niche markets driven by the emerging importance of big data underpins our success, we continue to invest in these areas and anticipate this will deliver further growth during the remainder of 2014 and into 2015," said Braund.
Interquest said it saw a strong performance in the first half from both its contract and permanent recruitment businesses,
The group said it has a "robust and resilient" operational business mix between contract and permanent recruitment activities, with one third permanent recruitment and two thirds contract recruitment.
The company said results were also boosted by the recent acquisition of Ecom Recruitment Ltd, a UK digital technology recruitment firm, which it said has enhanced the opportunity for cross-selling.
InterQuest shares were up 5.1% at 124.00 pence Tuesday morning.
By Rowena Harris-Doughty; [email protected]; @rharrisdoughty
Copyright 2014 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Related Shares:
InterQuest Group