More Bad News From Huveaux

Huveaux is coming to terms with the cancelation of SATS and the impact on their education business. The Chairman has gone. Can Gerry Murray, the CEO survive when every announcement from Huveaux is more bad news and under perfromance. It is not that the trading is difficult, thats true for all but rather that the business seems unable to manage city expectations.

Heave ho Huveaux

Huveaux has reported dreadful preliminary results for 2007. Revenue grew by just 2% and profits collapsed to 400k from £2.3m. A million of this was exceptional restructuring costs and costs of the aborted sales process. Nevertheless this once hot and aquisitive group is now embattlled in trying to prove it has something worthwhile to offer shareholders.

It has suffered badly from the collapse in Pharma advertising in France and it could be argued not their fault, but this cannot disguise that Gerry Murray (pictured looking wierdly youthful), the CEO has a tough time ahead of him. Huveaux has declared that it will not make any further acquisitions for the time being as it hunkers down and tries to work out how to make a profit from what its got. They say it will be more events and more online, but they don't say how. They do say this though,

"The trading environment for all media companies in 2008 is predicted to be challenging. Whilst much of our advertising is ‘defensive’ in nature, we will not be entirely immune to an economic downturn .We can expect very little in the way of growth in advertising".

So no growth in what they have - and no acquisitions. Its tough out there.

Boom in Business Media and Earth is Flat.

Apparently the Press Gazette is leading this week with headline "Boom-time for business media." I'll read the feature with interest but I fear the fine folk at PG may have swallowed what Nick Davies as called some "Flat Earth News". If this is a boom time for business media why did Huveaux have to abandon its sale process last year; why is RBI closing its healthcare magazines and laying off a further 16 people and warning of an uncertain year ahead? Why is Centaur share price trading at 25% below its float price of four years ago? There are some real opportunities in business media, but a boom time this isn't. The sub prime mortage market is worth a lot more than £23bn and that's not booming either.