Chief executive Andy Blundell said: "We are interested in making an acquisition and as a PLC with a share price that's much stronger than it was 12 months ago; we're in a pretty good place from an M&A standpoint right now."

Turnover for the year to 31 December 2010 rose around 1.6% to £193.2m, while operating profit before exceptional items was up around 10% at £7.9m. Net debt was reduced by £1m to £15.8m, while net cash inflow was £6.2m.

"Our concern as a management team was to make absolutely sure we delivered on what we said we were going to do last year and financially that's exactly what we've done," said Blundell. "We have hit every target that we set out to hit at the start of the year or done somewhat better."

Communisis highlighted strong growth in its Intelligence Driven Communications (IDC) division, which achieved a 24% increase in operating profit before exceptional items to £4.1m (2009: £3.3m) compared with a 5% increase, to £8.3m (2009: £7.9m), for its Specialist Production and Sourcing (SPS) print division.

Blundell said the growth had been "encouraging" across the business overall, although he admitted that it was "very heavily skewed towards IDC" in the period under analysis.

"Whether that continues to be skewed quite as heavily as that, we're not sure," he added. "We may see proportionately stronger growth in SPS [in future] – we'll still see growth in IDC, but certainly some parts of SPS, such as security printing, have had a very strong start to 2011."

Communisis highlighted contract wins with Brighthouse, Barclaycard, Everything Everywhere and Tesco Clubcard in its IDC segment, although its results also revealed that the cost of renewing its contract with major client Barclays had been a £1.8m rebate, which has been capitalised and will now be amortised over the remainder of the contract term.

Meanwhile, Blundell said the company was pleased to have recently completed a refinance of its bank debt facilities after signing a syndicated arrangement with current banks Barclays and Lloyds, together with new funder HSBC, on 24 February 2011. KBC, which was formerly a banker to the company has "effectively ceased lending in the UK" Blundell said.

The refinance has reduced Communisis' revolving credit facility from £50m to £40m, with a term of three-and-a-half years until mid 2014, with an overdraft of £5m – renewable quarterly.

Blundell said: "We're pretty pleased to have got it sorted and put a tick in that box because we do think that for the industry more generally, going into this year and next, refinancing is going to be pretty high on various agendas."

Communisis' share price rose 5% to 33p in early trading before falling back to 30.5p, down marginally on the opening price of 31p, at the time of writing.