29th Jan 2008 11:00
Numis Corporation PLC29 January 2008 EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE Tuesday 29 January 2008 at 11.00 am Numis Corporation Plc ("Numis") The Board of Numis announces that today, 29 January 2008, at the Annual GeneralMeeting Michael Spencer (Non-Executive Chairman) reported: "It has been another successful year for the Group, despite more challengingmarket conditions, with another year of record profits......... Our talented and committed people deliver an exceptional quality of service toNumis' clients; and, Numis' service record was recognised for the second yearrunning by first place in The Thompson Extel survey of institutional investorsand hedge funds investing in stocks with market capitalisations of less than £1billion. In addition to first place overall, Numis achieved first place forquality of research, for trade execution and for corporate access. Reflecting our success in the Thomson Extel survey, we are also pleased toreport that our institutional client base continues to grow and that we now have114 active corporate clients. Underpinning this growth in the continuingimprovement in our capabilities with the recruitment of new talent, including,for instance, the recent acquisition of the Winterflood investment trust team. Numis is set on becoming a leader in the UK investment banking and brokingmarket. Numis is committed to growing the business organically and is proud ofits entrepreneurial and client focused culture where all staff can participatein the direction and profit of the firm. We are determined to encourage employeeshare ownership as a means of focusing staff on long term growth and valuecreation. You will also see in our AGM notice that we are proposing to enhanceexisting staff compensation share schemes at this meeting; and I commend theseresolutions to you. Looking to the future, despite the Northern Rock debacle, London continues to beregarded as the leading international financial market and, as such, is ofgrowing interest to overseas companies wanting to access capital. It is also amarket of considerable interest to international investors wanting to deploycapital. By building high quality teams focused on client service andmaintaining a strong balance sheet, Numis is positioned to benefit from thesetrends, particularly through our rapidly developing New York office as well asour increasingly international client base. As I have said, 2007 was a record year with total revenues up 21% to £87.6million. Profit before tax and exceptional items for the year rose by 13% to£40.3 million. Basic earnings per share before exceptional items were up by 13%to 28.6p, while net assets increased by 16% to £109.0 million. Since 30 September 2007, Numis has had an encouraging start to the yearnotwithstanding increasingly difficult trading conditions. In our first quarter,total trading and investment banking revenues were down 34% on the same periodlast year as a result of lowered levels of capital market activity. However,institutional commissions were up 41% and total revenues, including results ofinvesting activities, are ahead of the same period last year." 29 January 2008 END Contacts: Numis Corporation: Oliver Hemsley, Chief Executive 020 7260 1256Bill Trent, Chief Financial Officer 020 7260 1333 Brunswick: Gill Ackers 020 7936 5382Carole Cable 020 7396 7458 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (Nominated Adviser): Simon Boadle 020 7583 5000 Jon Raggett 020 7583 5000 This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
NUM.L