Next Fifteen Communications Group said today revenues for the six months ended Jan. 31 rose 11% to £45.3M over the period last year. Profit ticked up 7% to £1.9M.
Organic growth, adjusted to exclude acquisitions and currency impact, rose 4% while net debt increased from £1.6M to £4.4M reflecting payments on acquisitions of firms like Blueshirt Group (2010), M Booth (2009) and Germany-based Trademark PR (2012).
Layouts for those deals during the six-month period totaled £5.4M.
“We are pleased by the progress made across the group in mixed market conditions for marketing services generally,” said chairman and CEO Tim Dyson, singling out digital and the U.S. consumer sector as strong performers.
Dyson said the increase in revenue reflects strong growth in several agencies but weakness in its U.K. consumer business and in Europe.
Next Fifteen also owns agencies like Bite Communications, Text 100, The Outcast Agency and Lexis (U.K.).
Digital organic growth hit 39% on business wins for Novartis, EMI and Groupon. Dyson said the group’s digital business has also buoyed its U.S. consumer work, although a slump in the U.K. in that sector showed an overall 2% decline for the period.
The sluggish U.K. consumer performance has led to a reshuffling of the operation, Dyson said, including a re-branding of the business and a greater emphasis on digital that will cost Next Fifteen £400,000 in the current fiscal year.
Blueshirt’s work on IPOs for Yelp and Angie’s List strengthened the group’s corporate communications, specifically IR, segment.
“The group is seeing a strong flow of new business opportunities in all regions except some parts of mainland Europe,” added Dyson.