Insurers help Reed Elsevier to lift FY profits

27th Feb 2014 15:16

Strong demand from insurers helped business information group Reed Elsevier to drive annual profits higher.Reed said its risk business, which provides data to the financial services industry, increased underlying revenue by 8% to £933m last year thanks to the insurance industry's healthy take-up of new products and services.The division also cashed in on strong demand for identity authentication and fraud detection software, which also contributed to a 6% rise in the division's adjusted operating profit to £414m.However, Reed said the US mortgage refinancing market slowed in the second half as expected and revenues from the US government also slowed in the fourth quarter."The outlook in 2014 for the federal government segment and mortgagerefinancing market is uncertain, but the fundamental growth drivers of the risk solutions business remain strong," Reed said.Overall group underlying adjusted operating profit rose 5% to £1.75bn on a 2% lift in revenue to £6bn.Underlying revenue rose across all its major business areas, although its legal division faced subdued trading in the US and Europe, with online growth mostly offset by continued decline in print products. Scope to increase the division's underlying revenue in 2014 was limited, it added.Reed increased the full-year dividend by 7% to 24.6p for the group's UK arm and by 8% to €0.506 for the Dutch operation.Chief Executive Erik Engstrom (pictured) said: "Early trends across our business in 2014 remain broadly consistent with 2013, and we are confident that, bycontinuing to execute our strategy, we will achieve another year of underlying revenue, profit, and earnings growth."Shares rose 11.5p or 1.3% to 920.5p by 16:02 in London.PW