Underlying revenues rose £30.6m to £327.4m, including £25.2m from Response One, Pragma and Incite, which were acquired during the year for a total consideration of £37.1m.
Revenue from print decreased by £2.4m to £280.3m following a 2.7% drop in books revenue and a 7.3% fall in Direct Response revenue, the latter being due to planned reductions in capacity.
Growth of 9.6% in Exhibitions and Events revenue and 2.9% in Point of Sale were not enough to offset the decline elsewhere in the group.
St Ives stressed that Clays – its book printing subsidiary – had actually increased market share, despite the drop in books revenue, which was the result of further reductions in average run lengths and higher costs associated with their conventional production.
On this front, Clays’ investment in a new Kodak/Timsons inkjet book printing line, announced this time last year and initially slated for delivery in spring 2012, will be operational by November.
Underlying gross profit margin increased from 26.8% to 27.4% while underlying pre-tax profit increased from £20.9m to £24.2m.
However, including non-underlying items, pre-tax profit fell from £16.9m to £14.9m, after a net charge before tax of £9.3m – more than double last year’s £4m charge.
St Ives said that this related to redundancy, asset impairment and other restructuring related costs (net of associated asset disposals) within its Direct Response, Point of Sale, Exhibition and Events, and Data Marketing businesses of £5.9m, acquisition related transactional costs of £1.4m and the amortisation of acquired intangibles of £3.7m.
The latter was partially offset by a reduction in estimated acquisition related deferred consideration of £1.7m relating to the purchase of Tactical Solutions.
Chief executive Patrick Martell said in a statement: "St Ives' future is in selling services which enable organisations and brands to improve the effectiveness of their marketing. We have successfully integrated the Marketing Services acquisitions into the Group and we are very pleased with how the businesses have performed to date.
"As a result of the major rationalisation across our Print businesses, the requirement for capital expenditure is substantially reduced versus historic levels. Investment is now predominantly focused on additional staff, expertise and capability within the Marketing Services businesses in order to realise growth opportunities, extend our customer propositions and develop the business for the long term.
"We do not expect the current extremely difficult trading conditions to ease. However, our market positions are strong, we continue to improve operational efficiencies, our financial position is robust and we have recently renewed our banking facilities.
"We believe that the actions we have taken during the year have significantly improved the Group's prospects and positioned it well for the future."
See this week's issue of PrintWeek (5 October) for more.
