• Turnover £244m, up seven per cent
• Profit* £30m
• £12m invested in new products and acquisitions
• Significant online developments through launches and acquisitions
• Continued expansion overseas from both owned operations and licensing

* before tax, finance costs, amortisation, developments and disposals  

Chairman’s statement

I am pleased to report a record year for the company in 2006 after a strong 2005. All our business activities – especially our overseas offices – experienced growth, a fitting stage for the beginning of the 50th anniversary of the Haymarket Group. During the year, in recognition of the increasing importance to us of digital platforms (including websites and TV) as well as the growth of our conferences and exhibitions business, we changed the name of the operating company to Haymarket Media Group and our divisions, Consumer Media and Business Media, to reflect their broader roles.

In the past three years, the group’s trading position has strengthened materially, allowing us to develop our business platform geographically and in the breadth of products we offer our specialist communities of professionals and enthusiasts.

We are fully embracing commercial opportunities in online across the group and have invested very significantly in this area. Within the past 12 months we have –

• Launched or re-launched more than 27 websites (13 in the UK, 14 overseas) • Doubled the size of our digital teams to ensure we continue to have the best sites with the best branded content and functionality • Acquired several leading websites that complemented our existing positions in our core markets of motoring ( pistonheads.com ) and print and packaging ( pressXchange.com ).

Trading Highlights

Haymarket Business Media

In tough market conditions many of our titles achieved significant gains in market share.

The continued growth of our face-to-face events business, which is made up of conferences, awards and forums, was particularly pleasing. Events revenue grew by 17 per cent over the year and profits grew by 35 per cent.

We are pleased with the acquisition, completed earlier this year, of Nursery World which complements our Children and Youth sector and the launch of Ends Legal Compliance Manager , which is off to a flying start. Our recruitment revenues are holding up well across the board both in print and online despite some difficulties in the public sector recruitment markets.

We re-launched Media Week and Packaging News , having acquired the media division of Quantum Business ( Media Week , Packaging News , AV and Eye ) in 2005 and all the new titles exceeded their acquisition business plans in 2006. In April 2006 we acquired Printing World and Packaging Magazine from CMP and, again, after their inclusion in our Print and Packaging sector, they have also exceeded expectations.

We recently acquired the online machinery trading site pressXchange.com which, together with the re-launches of both printweek.com and packagingnews.co.uk , further bolstered the Print and Packaging sector.

We successfully re-launched brandrepublic.com , the unrivalled online market leader for the communications, advertising and marketing community, providing richer content and more interactive services.

We have made considerable investments in our online business, both in infrastructure and new sites, resulting in the division’s year-on-year online revenue growth of 41 per cent.  

Haymarket Consumer Media

The move of the consumer business from four buildings into one at Teddington Studios in early 2006 enabled us to restructure the business, particularly the advertising teams. They were centralised and redeployed to facilitate sales across multiple platforms and take advantage of new sales opportunities.

The creation of a senior management Digital Leadership Team to spearhead Consumer Media’s online investment has continued to drive exponential growth digitally. whatcar.com , PPA Interactive/Online Consumer Magazine of the Year, goes from strength to strength and enjoyed traffic of eight million unique visitors in 2006. Recently, we reinforced our position in motoring online with the acquisition of pistonheads.com which boasts some 1.2m unique visitors and more than 60m page impressions a month making it Haymarket’s largest website. In late autumn 2006 we launched the much-anticipated stuff.tv online. Its podcasts regularly make it into the iTunes Top 40.

eve magazine, Haymarket’s entry in the growing ‘mid youth’ women’s market, continued to progress with two consecutive periods of ABC growth. We extended the eve portfolio, utilising our existing motoring expertise to launch evecars.com , the first dedicated car website for women, and at the end of 2006 held the inaugural eve Style Show alongside the long established Clothes Show Live at the NEC.

FourFourTwo was our World Cup winner, recording its largest ABC of 111,406 in Jan-Jun 2006; Stuff ’s ABC broke through 100,000 in July-Dec 2006; and the excitement around Lewis Hamilton’s Formula 1 title challenge has boosted Autosport , F1 Racing and Motorsport News .

Haymarket Network

Our customer media business was re-branded ‘Haymarket Network – The Editorial Agency’ after we moved into Teddington Studios. Its new Managing Director, Juliet Slot, joined us from the commercial team that won the 2012 Olympic bid. The company was restructured into three distinct divisions – Leisure, Sport and Public Sector – in order to manage our continued growth.

We reinforced our position as one of the top three agencies in this sector with prestigious new client wins including the much-coveted Sky Sports Magazine and the sought-after Design Council business. It was another award-rich year, too, with Network winning four of the 10 honours at the highly regarded APA awards, including online publishing solution of the year for ManUtd.com and Most Effective Public Sector Title for the Army magazine Camouflage .

Haymarket Exhibitions

We extended our position as the leading organiser of consumer exhibitions in the UK by launching eve Style Show , a brand extension of our successful women’s magazine, as a co-located show with Clothes Show Live .

Autosport International grew even stronger and Clothes Show Live lifted its gate by 12 per cent as well as launching a new TV programme on UKTV. Clothes Show Live recently won the AEO Consumer Show of the Year Excellence Award.

In June we launched our BBC Summer Festival at the Birmingham NEC, a co-location with our successful BBC Gardeners’ World Live , BBC Good Homes Live and BBC Good Food Summer Festival events. This enormous celebration of summer living was a huge success and drew more than 130,000 attendees in total.

Later this year we will extend our reach into the food market with the expansion of the BBC Good Food shows to Glasgow. We now have four BBC Good Food shows in the portfolio.

Cereals , in its first year under Haymarket ownership, had its best-ever year. We have also further developed our business exhibition portfolio with a number of new launches including What Kit? and Fruit Focus .  

Haymarket Worldwide

Haymarket Media Inc., based in New York, experienced another record year in its medical division, especially in medical education where the team has expanded into new offices in New Jersey. Its marketing division also had a record year. Earlier this year, the marketing division was strengthened by the acquisition of DM News , the leading magazine in the US direct marketing industry.

Haymarket Network’s Californian office had its most profitable year ever after winning new business from motoring and motor sport clients.

In Hong Kong, we took 100 per cent ownership of Finance Asia , which has performed beyond expectation.

In Germany, we have consolidated the acquisition of Thalacker Medien, the market leading horticulture group, and have been encouraged by the signs of economic recovery in this important market.

In India, we are looking to invest in increased frequencies for our consumer titles as well as launching new versions of Haymarket’s market-leading business titles.

Our Australian business has rapidly expanded its online activities and has, as a centre of digital excellence, begun to supply services to other parts of the company.

We have recently signed our 108th international licence agreement, making us the world’s third largest licensor of magazines. Haymarket titles are now published in 40 countries in 31 languages, and 25 per cent of revenues now come from overseas. We are in the process of rolling out online and live events’ licences, further enhancing the strong relationships with our existing licensing partners. This will provide a combined media licence proposition for potential partners, as well as online-only licences to new online-only partners.

Environment

Haymarket is the only major publisher to be awarded (in 2005) ISO 14001. This accreditation reflects our commitment to setting the highest environmental standards in all our activities. We continue wherever possible to seek the highest standards both internally – be it in water consumption, aluminium recycling, composting, newstrade waste and standardised production – and externally, where we are working with our many suppliers to improve efficiency and minimise environmental damage throughout the business.

We have been also awarded Chain of Custody, demonstrating our commitment to practicing legitimate, traceable and responsible paper-sourcing and granting us the right to carry the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) or PEFC logos within relevant titles.

In addition, in the past nine months we have won the PPA Environmental Performance award and the Environmental Client award at the recent Quality in Print awards.

Outlook

Looking ahead, our Business Media division continues to develop the range of products and brand extensions that the communities we serve are increasingly demanding. Certain revenue streams are undoubtedly moving online and we have developed websites and businesses such as blueboomerang.com to ensure we are positioned to benefit.

Within our Consumer Media division, the core print markets are unquestionably slowing down through a combination of migration online, increased competition on the bookstalls and an increasingly competitive advertising market. We are also facing threats to our cost base and routes to market by the OFT review of the distribution structure and the ‘Zonal Pricing’ proposal from the Royal Mail.

The digital age is transforming the media marketplace and significant parts of the traditional publishing industry have already, and will continue, to migrate to digital media. Our knowledge and deep understanding of the specialist market sectors in which we operate, our track record of extending our brands into new areas and the special relationship we have with our readers, makes us ideally equipped to take advantage of this exciting digital environment.

We already have a number of highly profitable online sites, some of which will be as profitable as their parent magazines before long. Indeed, we anticipate that this year our online activities will contribute up to 10 per cent of total sales and more than 10 per cent of profits.

Our magazines will always remain at the core of our business and our commitment to editorial excellence, honed over 50 years, is as strong as ever. We believe a combination of online platforms working in harmony with our print products and live events creates the very strongest editorial offering.

Finally, I would like to thank all our staff for their hard work and achievements in 2006 and to date in 2007, our 50th year. Our staff are vital to our success and we will continue to invest in training and development, as well as the recruitment of people with new skills into the business, to equip us for the challenges ahead.

The Rt Hon the Lord Heseltine CH Chairman

Editors’ note:
The Haymarket Media Group is the largest privately-owned magazine publisher, and one of the fastest growing media companies, in the UK. The principal business is centred around its consumer, business, professional and customer publications. These are complemented by digital platforms and live events, including extensive exhibitions, conferences and awards. The Group’s global expansion comes from wholly owned subsidiaries, joint ventures and extensive licensing of key magazines to other publishers. For more information see www.haymarket.com .