It was encouraging to see Communisis' profits moving in the right direction in the group's recently-announced interim results.

A 27% jump in operating profits is no mean feat in anyone's book, the caveat being that a chunk of this improvement, some ?500,000, came from cutting corporate costs. As demonstrated by fellow plc St Ives in an earlier era, there's only so far you can go when boosting profits the cost-cutting way.

I'm sure the very good news for Communisis is that its profitable cheque printing operation is set to live on longer than anticipated now cheques have had a stay of execution. 

I was also interested in, and rather surprised about, the fall in profits at the Intelligence Driven Communications division, this being the fancy data/campaign management bit of the group that Communisis is pinning so much on viz the future shape of the business and profitable revenue streams. Sales in IDC were down ?1.6m to ?11.3m, and operating profits fell 40% to ?1.5m.

According to the commentary, this was due to it taking longer to close some new business opportunities "due to lengthening customer decision processes", although this trend is expected to reverse in the second half of its financial year. Customers were also tempted by heavy discounting in other advertising and media channels where Communisis doesn't have an offering.

It's going to be fascinating to see whether IDC can turn things around come the year-end.

And talking of year-ends, with the St Ives financial year completed just the other week it will be equally noteworthy to see how that group's nascent Marketing Services wing is getting on and whether the promised profits are materialising there.