Lighthouse Group plc (LON:LGT) Chief Executive Officer Malcolm Streatfield caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss their interim results for the six months ended 30th June 2017
Q1: Good news out this morning, could you talk us through the highlights?
A1: Yes, we put out our interim results for the half-year ending 30th June and we are delighted to report increasing turnover increased to £25.67 million which is an 8% increase over the same period last year. More importantly, the EBITDA number has increased by 26% to £1.27 million which is a healthy increase over the year before and that in turn has made pre-tax profits increase by 36% to a healthy £1.13 million. Putting that altogether for our shareholders, we’ve managed to increase the dividend again by 33% to 0.12p per share so it captures a very healthy first half of the year for Lighthouse Group.
Q2: Now, you’ve renewed a couple of your affinity contracts and you’ve signed some new partners, can you give us a bit more information on these new relationships?
A2: The new relationships that Lighthouse Group have formed in the first half of the year, which we’ve announced, now bring our affinity totals to just over 20 and that increases our reach into what we describe as ‘middle Britain’ which are working members of the public. These 20 affinity groups represent over 6 million people and they’re very deep-seated relationships and we get called in to present to an increasing number of people each year, currently around 15,000 people per annum we present on an annual basis.
Our growing reputation in this marketplace helps us establish new relationships and only last week, we announced the arrangement that we now have with the Social Workers Union and that was as a direct result of the good work, with others, being talked about and the Social Workers Union being interested in forming a relationship with us.
So, we are more than excited to keep our affinity relationships developing positively and as you can see from the results, it’s a major plank of our new business drive going forward.
Q3: How is the new Luceo product range developing?
A3: The Luceo product range, we launched September last year so we’re coming up to the first anniversary, and at the first anniversary we should have around about £30 million invested in our 5 ‘fund of funds’ range where the appointed fund manager is Octopus Investments. These funds, as we previously reported, has been specifically designed with a specific risk profile in mind, on a risk platform of 3-7 and our advisers, particularly in our national business serving our affinity groups, have supported the funds through their engagement with clients very positively throughout the year.
So, we’re delighted with how Luceo is developing and we did say at the time that we’d be developing it further and in the second half of the year, we anticipate making further adjustments to our Luceo range by developing it further with some more fund launches. So, we will be talking about that in a little bit more detail when we get to launch that increased range of funds.
Q4: Now, it all sounds very positive, how are Lighthouse Group set for the rest of the year?
A4: We’re set fair for the rest of the year. We are busy doing more of the same, every time we report, we report an increasing rise in activity with our affinity groups and we expect that to continue. Certainly, the economic environment in the UK is really leading to more and more people wanting access to quality financial advice. Clearly, that’s the business we’re in so we expect to be quite busy all the way into the run up to the end of the year.
