Group revenues for the 17-week period were up 7.5% year-on-year at £106.8m, primarily due to organic and acquisition-led growth of 6.4% and 37.8% respectively in St Ives' marketing services division.
St Ives chief financial officer Matt Armitage said that the 6.4% organic growth in marketing services was "slightly ahead" of expectations, which are for between 3%-5% organic growth over the next two to three years.
"We're slightly ahead of that as a result of growth within our data marketing and digital marketing businesses and because we're reaping the rewards from taking [high-end market research consultancy] Incite overseas into Singapore and New York," said Armitage.
He added that while there were "no yawning gaps" in St Ives' burgeoning marketing services division - recently bolstered by the additions of Realise Digital and Hive Health - the group would continue to target complementary businesses that would add to its existing services.
Armitage said that St Ives had been on the lookout for a "pure-play analytics business" in the area of media performance and the understanding of media spend, but that it had yet to find a suitable target.
"One area that would be of interest would be the analysis of the effectiveness of media spend across all channels from social through to ATL [above-the-line], BTL [below-the-line], etc," said Armitage. "Because we don't provide any broadcast media services to our clients, we feel we could add an element of independence in terms of that analysis."
Group operating margin was said to have improved over the prior year thanks to improved revenue mix following the disposal of the lower-margin direct mail printing business, St Ives Direct Bradford.
Total print revenues were down year-on-year due to the DM business disposal to Global MP, which Armitage said was continuing to pay the deferred £5m for the business according to the revised schedule.
Excluding the DM business, like-for-like basis print revenues rose 7.9%, with the growth coming from SP Group and Service Graphics, although not as a result of the World Cup, which Armitage said had "perhaps not led to the spike we all would have liked".
Armitage said the group would continue to invest in its retained print businesses, Clays, SP Group and Service Graphics, although he said next year's spend would probably be lower than the approximately £8m St Ives spent this year, largely on digital print equipment.
"Next year we will probably spend around £5m on print capital investment, probably focused more on SP and Service Graphics simply because we've invested very significantly in books in the last few years," he said.
