Q1. Growth has been difficult in the last 12 months but does the Next Fifteen brand portfolio still offer good growth prospects?

Question

Growth has been difficult in the last 12 months but does the Next Fifteen brand portfolio still offer good growth prospects?

Answer

The growth prospects for the Next Fifteen Group are actually quite strong I believe in the next 12-18 months. We definitely saw the Group go through a very tough period in the first quarter of this calendar year. And that really came through the general economic slow-down. But as we’ve seen markets start to recover, we’ve seen a pretty quick return to a much more normal spending pattern in public relations. And we’ve also seen a move towards really, really specialised consulting firms as people really try and get growth back into their business. So, at just general base level, I think the growth opportunities definitely exist. If you layer upon that, the things that we’re doing as a Group to generate growth, and that hopefully you’ll see even better growth coming out of the organisation. Those things really come back to the acquisition that we made of M Booth, which in itself will just naturally generate growth for the Group. But should also enable the sister brand Lexis, with whom they’re going to focus on building a global consumer business to also generate interesting growth opportunities. Secondly, the addition of the Group Metal digital consulting business, will naturally deliver some interesting longer term growth prospects for the group. And I think that will be an exciting step for the company. Then you have the acquisition of the Upstream Asia business for Bite. That in itself takes Bite into a very different realm. It certainly opens doors for it to leverage its European and US client base, and take it into Asia. But it also enables them to pitch for more global pieces of business. So the growth prospect if you like for the Group will come from two areas. One is a general improvement in the economic environment, which should naturally improve the growth opportunities, but secondly the acquisitions and organic expansions we’re making as a group.