Business
Preliminary Announcement of Results
Preliminary Announcement of Results.
About this update from Personal Group Holdings Plc
[{"type":"text","content":"\n \n PERSONAL GROUP HOLDINGS PLC \n PRELIMINARY ANNOUNCEMENT OF RESULTS \n FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2008 \n\nThe board of directors of Personal Group Holdings Plc, providers of employee\nbenefits, insurance and consultancy, are pleased to announce the group's\nresults as follows:\n\n * Revenue up 2% to £26.8m (2007: £26.4m)\n \n * EBITDA £9.2m (2007: £9.4m)\n \n * Underlying PBT of £8.7m (2007: £8.6m)\n \n * 2008 has been a record year for new business production with Personal\n Hospital Plan (PHP) and Death Benefit (DB) 29% ahead of 2007\n \n * Dividends paid in 2008 amounted to 16.5p per share, a 38% increase over\n 2007\n \n * First quarterly dividend payment of 2009 amounting to 4.15p per share paid\n today. Providing business continues as expected the board anticipates\n paying identical amounts in June, September and December 2009\n \n * Goodwill impairment of £3.4m relating to the acquisition of Berkeley Morgan\n Group Limited in 2005.\n \nEBITDA is defined as earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and goodwill\nimpairment.\n\nUnderlying PBT is defined as earnings before tax and goodwill impairment.\n\nThe AGM will be held on 28 April 2009.\n\nKen Rooney, Group managing director, commented:\n\n2008 was our most successful year ever in terms of new benefit programmes\nlaunched and the income generated from these and our existing client\nrelationships.\n\nDuring the year, 28 new benefit programmes were arranged including schemes for\nVision Express, UK Mail, TNT and Merseyrail. New business premiums for our\nmajor insurance products increased by approximately 29% compared to 2007, and\nit was particularly pleasing that the second half of the year was stronger than\nthe first.\n\nThe Voluntary Group Income Protection scheme continues to progress with 8 new\nemployers adopting the programme including Pendragon & IPC Media. We are\ncommitted to developing this plan further during 2009. Again we wrote more new\nbusiness in the second half of the year than the first.\n\nPerflex, our flexible benefits software, can now be accessed by 360,000\nemployees through 102 employers.\n\nThe Berkeley Morgan Group (BMG) side of the business continued to trade solidly\nmaking a valuable contribution to the group's income and profitability.\nHowever, the projected underlying performance of BMG has deteriorated since we\...