Business
Half-yearly Report
Half-yearly Report.
About this update from Personal Group Holdings Plc
[{"type":"text","content":"\n \nPersonal Group Holdings Plc - Interim Statement\nFor the 6 months ended 30 June 2008\n\n\nEnquiries:\n\nPersonal Group Holdings Plc Tel: 0207 367 8888(on 29/9/08)\nChristopher Johnston, Chairman 01908 605000 ext 235 (thereafter)\nKen Rooney, Managing Director\nJohn Barber, Finance Director\n\nCenkos Securities\nStephen Keys Tel: 0207 397 8900\n\nBankside Consultants\nSimon Rothschild Tel: 0207 367 8888\n\n\nInterim statement for the six months to 30 June 2008\n\n\nPersonal Group Holdings Plc is one of the UK's leading providers of employee\nbenefits insurance and consultancy.\n\nHighlights\n\n 2008 2007 %\n \n £m £m \n \nProfit before tax 4.4 4.2 +5\n \nTotal revenue 13.2 13.2 -\n \n 2008 2007 %\n \n pence pence \n \nEarnings per share (basic) 10.2 9.8 +4\n \nDividends per share paid in 2008 9.9 9.5 +4\n \n\nKen Rooney, Chief Executive, commented:\n\n\"Thirteen new benefit programmes were launched in the first half of 2008\nincluding those for Vision Express,\nUK Mail and Barchester Healthcare. This new business will begin to show through\nin revenue in the second half of 2008 and in 2009. In addition, renewal\nprogrammes for our established host employers generated significant new\ninsurance sales opportunities. Our core hospital plan and death benefit\npolicies have continued to perform very strongly.\n\n\nAlthough progress for our Voluntary Group Income Protection project has not\ngathered momentum as fast as anticipated we have introduced seven new host\ncompanies to the scheme in the first full year of operation.\nOur Perflex software continues to attract more users with 320,000 employees now\nhaving access to the system from 88 companies.\"\n\n\nChairman's Statement\n\n\nGroup profit before tax (PBT) for the period was £4.4m (2007: £4.2m).\n\nRevenues from our Personal Hospital Plan (PHP) and Death Benefit (DB), our core\nemployee benefit related business policies, increased to £8.1m and £1.1m\nrespectively (2007: £7.9m and £0.9m respectively) as the improved new business\nproduction achieved in 2007 began to feed into 2008.\n\nNew business in the first half of 2008 showed an improvement over the\ncorresponding period in 2007 and exceeded our all time first half year record\nset in 2005. Expenses, in particular travel and accommodation costs, for our\nexpanded field based employed sales team increased from £2...