Investment in Creative Services and Trading Update

19 June 2012

Communisis plc

("Communisis" or the "Group")

Further Investment in Creative Services and Trading Update

- Communisis acquires 49% equity stake in The Garden Marketing Limited -

- Investment extends Communisis' creative services offering and adds significant new blue-chip customer relationship -

Communisis plc (LSE: CMS), the leading marketing services provider ("MSP"), is pleased to announce today that it has acquired a 49% equity stake in The Garden Marketing Limited ("TGML") for a cash consideration of £0.4m, with an option to acquire the remaining 51% for about £0.6m. 

TGML is a full service integrated marketing agency based in London. The company was founded in 1987 and generates annual revenues in the region of £1.0m. TGML specialises in creating lead generation and collateral marketing communications for financial services and technology clients. It delivers print and digital marketing assets, advertising and direct mail campaigns across both consumer and business-to-business channels.

Communisis' investment in TGML extends the Group's creative services offering, adding further strategic planning expertise, conceptual creative services, copywriting and additional artworking resources to Communisis' strong and growing marketing services proposition.

The investment is aligned with the Group's strategic objectives to build breadth and depth in the range of creative services offered to its customers and to achieve a double digit operating margin on sales (excluding pass-through) over the medium term. The investment also brings to Communisis a significant new customer relationship with a major blue-chip financial services provider.

Graham Lee, Managing Director of TGML said:

"We are delighted to become an associate company of Communisis and look forward to developing a progressively closer relationship. I believe that together, our combination of creative strategic thinking and enterprise scalability will give us the ability to deliver a unique and compelling marketing services proposition."

Commenting on the investment, Andy Blundell, Chief Executive of Communisis, said: 

"This deal with TGML marks the latest stage in the implementation of our growth strategy and further expands our service capability. We look forward to working with them and our joint plans for sales synergies are already well advanced."

Trading Update

Trading since the interim management statement released on 2nd May 2012 has been encouraging, with a continuing strong pipeline of business development opportunities. As a result management's expectations for Group results for the half year remain unchanged. Communisis will report interim results for the six months ending 30 June 2012 on 26 July 2012.

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About Communisis

Communisis is a UK leading marketing services provider, specialising in helping customers make their communications processes more profitable. It helps to reduce costs and improve the effectiveness of the whole business process of customer communications.

Through its proven experience and scale, it works with clients to transform their customer communications processes by enhancing and deploying customer data; providing technology to automate and streamline workflows; and have world-class production capabilities that can output via print and electronic channels.

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