Companies: ACG   

Diversification into informal debt management, consolidation loans and re-mortgaging spared the blushes of Accuma, the provider of Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs), which has already warned on profits for the year to July.

Greater competition and resistance from creditors have hit the quoted IVA sector, and the IVA business of Accuma has also suffered, not helped by an admitted ‘poorly executed’ marketing strategy.

Thankfully, chief executive Charles Howson’s decision to build a more rounded consumer financial solutions business paid off at the interim, with results to the end of January proving surprisingly robust. He reported a four-fold increase in adjusted pre-tax profits (adding back goodwill amortisation) to £1.6m – and an encouraging rise in operating margins from 6.9% to 15.5% – on turnover more than doubled to £10.6m. Diluted earnings surged 258% north to 3.47p.

The results reflected the effectiveness of broadening the range of services to debt-laden consumers via recent acquisitions Byrom Keeley, a debt advisory business, and Loan Line, an FSA regulated loan and mortgage broker. The deals were originally completed to maximise earnings by boosting enquiries to which the group could provide appropriate debt solutions. As it turned out, these acquisitions cushioned the fall from what Howson considers to be ‘short-term’ pressure on the IVA sector.

Significantly, before these acquisitions, enquiry-conversion rate to IVAs stood at 4%. In the wake of the deals, Accuma is seeing overall conversion ratios of calls received across the group of 24%.

Though the group has cut its reliance on the IVA market, altered its marketing strategy and expects the IVA run rate to recover later in the financial year, newcomers should probably steer clear of a story cloaked in uncertainty for now.

Readers who followed our bullish stance – Growth Company Investor backed the shares at 181.5p and has urged further buying since – will be rightly disappointed with the share-price performance. Given the fourfold profits leap at the interim, however, there is still a compelling business here, and now is not the time to sell.