Excluding a £161,000 exceptional charge relating to its acquisition of Netherlands-based Media Facility Group (MFG), Printing.com posted a pre-tax profit of £1.5m and EBITDA of £3m, down 23.1% and 2.7% respectively.
Capital investment in the year totalled £1.5m, none of which was financed, predominantly as a result of significant investment in the development of Printing.com's proprietary web-to-print system.
Tony Rafferty, chief executive of Printing.com, said: "This is the right time for us to put our money where our mouth is in terms of the direction we believe the industry will go and there's a clear gap in the market that we're seeking to address.
"Everybody that we speak to who has tried template technology has told us that the idea worked better than the practice and that template creation was the major bugbear of the process and means the client doesn't get up-to-date templates.
"Our belief is that you have to be able to build a template for most applications in under 10 minutes and that's what I think we've done. This is the heart of how we're trying to drive Printing.com further forward over the coming years."
Group turnover increased 17.7%, to £17m, largely as a result of sales generated by MFG in the five months that they were part of the group, which saw Eurozone revenues grow to 20.2% of total sales (2010: 5.5%).
Rafferty said: "The acquisition of MFG in 2010 has increased the Company's sales in the European market which, together with the recent launch of our new online template system, will help drive the Company’s future growth."
Printing.com's BrandDemand template system for larger, multi-site businesses, which was launched earlier this year, is currently being rolled out in France, with Holland and Ireland due to follow over the summer.
Meanwhile, Flyerzone – the corresponding system for SME clients – will launch in the next month, before being rolled out in France and Holland by the end of September.
Rafferty said: "After a year of building these systems we are now introducing the smartest web-to-print templates that exist. All of the previous systems are based on a technology that has had its day.
"A graphic designer who knows InDesign – with just an hour's training on our software – will be able to set up a template from any InDesign document, in minutes."
UK revenue was marginally down at £13.4m (2010: £13.6m), with an increase in the total number of franchise stores and bolt-ons, up from 281 to 288, offset by poor consumer confidence outside of London and the South East.
"We see a polarisation between the South East and London and the rest of the UK, where trading is a lot weaker," said Rafferty. "There's simply a little more confidence in the South East."
Trading in Ireland was unsurprisingly weak, with revenues falling 19% to £343,000, although Rafferty said that he believed it would "fight back over the [coming] year". On the continent, French revenues grew 39.6% to £455,000, making it the second-largest of the markets that Printing.com supplies directly.
PRINTING.COM PRELIMINARY RESULTS
For year ended 31 March 2011
Turnover £17m (2010: £14.5m)
EBITDA £3m (£3.1m)*
Pre-tax profit £1.5m (£1.7m)*
Capital expenditure £1.5m (£1m)
Net cash £2m (£2.1m)
Dividend 3.15p (3.15p)
* Before an exceptional charge of £161,000 relating to the acquisition of MFG
