Sports and leisure club operator Crown Sports unveiled healthy interim figures today as directors hinted at further deals in the fragmented health club marketplace, writes James Crux.

Today's figures reflected a major transformation of the company at the end of last year. Back in June 2000, the group was known as Golf Club Holdings and was listed on Aim. Since then it has changed its name to Crown Sports (CSP), bought Dragons Health Clubs, moved to the Full List and made numerous acquisitions.

The figures included a first full six months from Dragons and showed pre-tax profits of £1.3 million on sales of £12.9 million. Group finance director Steven Glew emphasised the dramatically transformed nature of the business, commenting that 'there are no comparables for the profit figures because all the numbers would look crazy'!

Acquisitions provided some £10.5 million of revenue, with £9.1 million coming from the Dragons clubs, where like-for-like sales hardened by 10.5 per cent. Crown Sports has been on the acquisition trail of late in what the board believes to be a rapidly consolidating industry. Martin Knight, executive deputy chairman, boasted that 'there are acquisition opportunities coming to us day by day and we are participating in the consolidation. We're a major player with a big seat at the table'.

As recently as July, Crown Sports snapped up an operator of three clubs in the North West for £8.4 million, taking total membership to more than 75,000 and total clubs up to 45. Directors added that the Axis and Trainstation clubs have been rebranded as Dragons, the Fitness Express clubs are performing well and its racing club, The Winning Line, has recovered well after a slow summer. And finally, its publishing business Crown Content will be selling books by Sally Gunnell and Jack Nicklaus by the end of the year and investors can expect more celebrity tie-ups to follow.

Analyst Ian Berry of Beeson Gregory expects pre-tax profits, excluding goodwill, of £5.5 million for the current year, giving earnings of 1.87p a share. The shares softened by 1.25p to 24p at the close of play, against a 52 week high of 37.5p and a 22.5p low.

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