News

30/07/2008 - Trading Update

Trading Update

Spectrum Interactive plc (AIM:SIN), a leading provider of public internet access and payphone services, is pleased to update the market on its trading activities for the year to 30 June 2008, ahead of its final results, expected to be announced in late-September.

Lord Young of Graffham, Chairman commented:

We have exceeded market expectations for the year ended 30 June 2008, with profit before tax expected to be in the region of £1.0m and profit before tax and amortisation (PBTA) in the region of £1.2m.

Our WiFi business has had a particularly strong performance in the second half following the completion of the Travelodge roll-out in January 2008.  Since then, we have added a further 50 hotels and 3 regional airports with other customers, and we now operate approaching 1,000 WiFi sites in the UK.

In April 2008, we commenced the operation of payphones and internet terminals at Heathrow Terminal 5, and since then we have seen good results from this location, with particularly strong performance from payphones.

I am pleased to report that we have recently secured a contract to install 100 new internet terminals at 50 city centre Travelodge hotels, and we expect to have this installation completed and operational within the next two months.

Trading for the current year has started well, and the Board is confident about prospects for the current year, which we anticipate will achieve good growth over last year.

Finally, since we announced in September 2007 that we intended to disinvest ourselves of our Germany operation, we have been exploring a number of possible options to achieve this objective.  Unfortunately, having exhausted all possibilities of disposing of this operation to third parties, the Board have concluded that our German subsidiary is no longer viable, and regrettably we have recently applied to the local court in Hamburg to place our German subsidiary, Spectrum Interactive GmbH, into the hands of an Administrative Receiver.  This action is not expected to have a material impact on the Group’s results or financial position.