RM profits plummet

Education specialist RM has reported weaker first-half profits from the same period last year due to a seasonal plunge in buying activity within its target sector.

Pre-tax profit reached £200,000 in comparison to £5.6m reported in 2007, but revenue slightly improved to £118m from £116m. Expectations for the full-year result remain unchanged, the company said.

"RM’s business has been transformed over the last six years. We are now a business with significantly improved medium-term visibility of orders, and where over three-quarters of revenues come from innovative, highly differentiated education products and services,” said RM’s chief executive Tim Pearson.

“Our customers are primarily in the public sector and have three-year budgets. It’s a model that provides returns for our shareholders and educationally useful products and services for our customers,” he said.

School buildings investment programme Building Schools for the Future (BSF) was one of the main areas of focus for RM. The vendor was successful in four of the eight BSF projects awarded and expects to reach selected bidder stages for an additional four schemes.

The results follow a profit warning issued in March blaming the high cost of bidding for BSF contracts, which will largely fall in the first six months of the year.