The investment company owns 11 media and marketing businesses and a property business. Its print operations include Magnet Harlequin Group (including Technik), Creo and Arken.
It was outbid in its recent £8.7m approach for Tangent Communications, but Writtle chairman Robert Essex said that events surrounding its bid had had the positive knock-on effect of raising the company’s profile.
“The Tangent bid put us on everyone’s radar. I’m probably getting at least one opportunity a day crossing my desk,” he said. “Institutions like the way we conduct ourselves – we had our valuation for Tangent and we weren’t going to enter into a bidding war.”
In its financial report for the year ended 31 December 2015, Essex said that Writtle had “reasonable expectations that 2016 will be marked by a significant corporate event”.
He told PrintWeek: “An IPO remains an ambition, but we would need to start life with a market capitalisation of around £100m, which means we need to double in size.”
If the group had been successful in its bid for Tangent, it could have reversed into the AIM-listed business.
Essex said that specialist areas of design, such as user experience and human-machine interfaces, were of particular interest to the group. “The UK and London are very, very good at design. But there’s still a place for print, hence our interest in Tangent.”
He also said that Writtle would continue to focus its acquisition strategy on part-ownership deals with vendors, rather than “value-destroying earn-outs”.
“Earn-outs are a disaster. I describe them as double debt,” Essex said. “Whereas if you share ownership with management they are far more likely to be motivated than employees who are working towards maximising their earn-out, after which point their motivation is zero.”
Turnover on continuing operations was up 5% to £83.1m and the group made an operating profit of £3.9m (2014: £3.6m).
Writtle cut its net debt by £1.79m to £4.28m.
The group runs its operations as if it were a PLC, and declared a final dividend of 8.2p a share (2014: 7p), resulting in a total dividend for the year of 11.5p (2014: 10p).
