Perform issues profit warning

Digital sports media company Perform has said that its 2013 earnings will be “significantly” below expectations after advertising and sponsorship performance “deteriorated” during the fourth quarter.

Perform said that full-year revenue would be about six per cent below previous expectations in both 2013 and 2014, with the fall in turnover hitting earnings. The company, which said that the fourth quarter of 2013 had been expected to generate a third of total annual revenue and about 50 per cent of adjusted annual EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation), added that the US and German markets had been particularly challenging.

Following the news, Perform’s share price fell by nearly 58 per cent to 180p by the close of trading on the London Stock Exchange yesterday (Thursday).

The company said that it had instigated a “major cost review exercise” across all areas of the business “to drive acquisition synergies and cost savings, in particular in the management, technology and operations functions.”

Simon Denyer, joint chief executive of Perform, told the Financial Times newspaper: “We’ve done a hell of a lot since the IPO in terms of our own organic international growth and acquisitions. We now need to have a much more prudent approach about what that means for our bottom line. We’re not going to slow down in our strategy. There’s nothing broken about the overall strategy and the business plan.”