Communisis looks to third year of “significant” growth

The Leeds-based firm was at the heart of the recent launch of the new brand EE, which currently offers the UK’s only 4G mobile and fibre broadband service.

EE, the owner of T-Mobile and Orange, is currently the only mobile operator in the UK with enough spectrum to offer 4G capability. Its three rivals, O2’s parent Telefonica, Vodafone and Three, are expected to be the frontrunners for additional frequencies as demand for mobile broadband grows.

Communisis said: “Many of the UK’s leading consumer-facing brands increasingly recognise the value of the group’s ability to design, produce and deploy their customer communications efficiently, reliably and at scale. “This has led to more projects incorporating our design services and resulted in a strong pipeline of bids that we expect to be confirmed before the year-end, for implementation early in 2013.”

In today’s update to the stock exchange, Communisis said that in overall terms it expects the annualised value of new business to “more than offset the reduction in demand for more mature products”. “We continue to manage our cost base in line with market developments so as to maintain our competitiveness and margins”, said the firm.

It said it has decided to reduce its cheque personalisation capacity by closing the operations in Lisburn, Northern Ireland and consolidating production at certain of our other facilities. The employee consultation process has already been completed, said the company.

Communisis said it has also decided to carry out a further restructuring of its direct mail operations in Leeds with the employee consultation process underway. Both proposals are expected to be implemented in January 2013.

An exceptional charge for the aggregate associated costs, in the region of £1.5m, will be reflected in the results for the second half of 2012, said the company. It said the resulting annual cost savings are estimated to be £1.3m.

The board’s expectations for results for the full year remain unchanged.

Andy Blundell, chief executive, said: “The focus at Communisis continues to be the successful pursuit of profitable growth.

“We are building our reputation as the trusted partner for the provision of customer communication services and in this context are pleased with the interest being shown by a number of major brands in the strength of our market leading propositions, especially for transactional documents, and look forward to announcing further new multi-year contract awards in the near future.”