I'm running a book on whether St Ives will ever buy another conventional printing press. What odds will you give me?

Since Mr Martell took over as chief executive two and a bit years ago, the business has spent more than ?61m acquiring companies (gosh, quite a lot when you tot it all up, although it hasn't paid out all of this sum yet as some of it is based on performance targets) that are involved in services such as data and market intelligence.

It's not always immediately apparent to simple folk like me what these businesses actually do, although whatever it is the margins are obviously more appealing than those made from putting ink on paper.

The PLC has also offloaded a large chunk of heavy metal print manufacturing in the shape of its web division. 

Come St Ives' year-end results next month we'll hear more about the group's strategy now that it has something more than a toe hold in 'complementary marketing services'. Rather than talk about what they plan to do, they've done a chunk of doing and can now reveal more about the 'what next' bit.

On the subject of printing presses there is of course the not-so-small matter of the recently-announced ?5m spend on digital book printing kit. But as for conventional presses... I'm not sure I'd put money on it.