BrainJuicer Group PLC (AIM: BJU)

("BrainJuicer", "the Company", or "the Group")

Pre Close Trading Statement

BrainJuicer, the innovative international market research agency, today releases the following update on trading for its financial year ended 31 December 2015.  The Company will announce its final results on 21 March 2016.

As usual, trading was stronger in the second half of the year than in the first half.  For the year as a whole, revenue increased by 2% to approximately £25.2m, and gross profit by 4%.  The impact of currency movements on the business as a whole was not material.  Among our core markets, the US performed strongly with revenue increasing by approximately 21%.  Revenue in the UK declined by 4%.  Elsewhere, revenue declined in Continental Europe and in our relatively small Asian and Brazilian businesses.

The modest increase in overall revenue masks the encouraging growth delivered by our core quantitative products and services - with growth estimated at 7% for the year.  As anticipated the Group's overall growth rate was dampened by the continued decline in revenue from our lower margin, less scalable Juice Generation qualitative research.  As highlighted in our Interim Results statement, we have spent the last 18 months replacing the qualitative business with, higher margin, more scalable brand tracking research.  Tracking now represents 7% of the business and is expected to continue growing strongly in 2016.  Almost all of the company's Juicy products are now higher margin, more scalable quantitative research services which will help to deliver progressively stronger growth.

Pre-tax profits for 2015 are expected to be approximately £4.5m (2014: £4.3m) in line with market expectations.  Adjusted pre-tax profits, after adding back one-off charges incurred in H1 of £0.3m and share-based payments of £0.2m, are expected to be approximately £5.0m.

BrainJuicer has again proved highly cash generative this year.  The Company returned £1.5m to shareholders during 2015 via ordinary dividends and management option share buy backs, and ended 2015 with a cash balance of £6.3m, equivalent to 48 pence per share, compared with £5.3m in 2014.  BrainJuicer has no debt. 

Looking ahead, 2016 will be another year of investment in pursuit of sustainable, long-term growth.  Notably, we are investing in setting up a creative agency:  System1 - Feel More, Buy More.  The agency will be distinctive in the market, with no fixed creative department or the overheads of one.  In an "Uber-era", there is creative talent available, which System1 will tap by briefing multiple creatives for each client brief.  Every idea will be pre-tested using BrainJuicer's methods and only high scoring ideas will be presented to clients.  Our small in-house team will be led by a highly experienced industry figure, who has recently joined the company.

This and other initiatives should over time help us to build top line momentum after the modest growth of the last 2 years.

The Company can be found at www.brainjuicer.com.

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