Park Group anticipates in-line full year results

2nd Apr 2014 08:33

AIM-listed Park Group, a gift voucher and prepaid gift card provider, said on Wednesday that its trading for the year ended March 31st was in line with market expectations after experiencing a continued gradual improvement in trading conditions.The company said its final Christmas order book was around 2% below the level of the previous year, but that overall trading had been moving in a positive direction. Notably, the Consumer business in Ireland delivered an improved performance, with billings ahead by over 12%.The Corporate business made generally good progress, the group reported, with underlying growth in billings, excluding consumer credit, increasing by over 7% compared with last year. However, the consumer credit sector remained weak and as a result, overall billings for the Corporate business will be approximately 11% below last year's level. In a statement the group said: "The recovery of the UK economy now appears more stable and this has had a positive impact across our business units. "While the improvement in consumer confidence came too late to impact billings for Christmas 2013, the early signs for Christmas 2014 are encouraging. Park's UK order book is currently 10% above last year's level, with orders in Ireland up over 3%." It added: "The outlook for 2014 remains positive, given the continuing improvement in UK economic conditions and consumer confidence." The group also reported that the expansion of its online trading business, highstreetvouchers.com, was maintained with orders advancing 27% year-on-year.The company will announce its preliminary results on June 10th.The share price rose 2.51% to 51p by 08:55. NR