SPACEANDPEOPLE, the shopping mall marketing company, has surged to a 60% rise in pre-tax profits in the first half of the year.
The firm, which sells promotional and retail merchandising space in shopping centres such as Braehead and Buchanan Galleries in Glasgow, booked earnings of £613,000 for the six months to June 30.
The results sent shares in the company, which is listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), up almost 8% in early trading before closing the day up 4.5p (3.52%) at 132.5p.
SpaceandPeople saw net revenue increase by 29% to £6.66 million as it enjoyed the fruits of work undertaken 18 months ago. This has seen it win business with major shopping centres in Germany and roll out more than 100 mobile kiosks to these outlets.
SpaceandPeople earns income from two main strands of activity. Its retail licensing arm sees it act as an "incubator" for small or start-up retailers, which sub-let kiosks in retail centres.
Its promotions arms sells space on behalf of centre owners to brands for promotional activities.
The firm's operation in Germany is now around half the size of its UK business.
Promotional sales in the UK market rose by 33% on a net basis to £1.79m as the accounts included income from its contracts with Intu and Land Securities for the first time.
However its UK retail operations saw revenue fall by 13% to £2.21m and operating profit fall to £438,000. It said the figures reflected a "clearer mall" strategy, which is seeing some of its customers, including Intu and Land Securities, move from populating malls with a large number of small kiosks to deploying a fewer number of larger fixed units.
However chief executive Matthew Bending insisted the company was prepared for the new approach.
He said: "We are quite happy with that because the rents we are able to achieve are probably about four or five times because the footprint is a lot bigger, therefore they can retail a lot more."
He said he was happy with the firm's UK showing, which has seen it complete the integration of the Retail Profile business it acquired in 2010 and hoped the next year to 18 months would see the firm benefit from the development of its pop up shop facility and S&P+, a new service designed to support agencies to deliver marketing campaigns.
Mr Bending said: "I am very pleased the work we did 18 months ago is coming through and manifesting itself in higher profits. The new stuff we are doing just now will hopefully keep the momentum and the growth of the business going forward."
He revealed the company planned to add to its team in Glasgow, where 52 of its 75 UK staff are based.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article