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Name | Symbol | Market | Type |
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RYB Education Inc | NYSE:RYB | NYSE | Depository Receipt |
Price Change | % Change | Price | High Price | Low Price | Open Price | Traded | Last Trade | |
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0.00 | 0.00% | 0.6912 | 0 | 01:00:00 |
RNS Number:0002O Royalblue Group PLC 28 July 2003 28th July 2003 royalblue group plc interim results for the six months ended 30th June 2003 royalblue reports 49% of revenues now recurring and 11 new fidessaNet sales 6 months to 30th June 12 months to 31st December 2003 2002 change 2002 Turnover #27.9m #29.3m -5% #57.0m Operating profit #3.5m #3.9m -10% #8.2m Diluted earnings per share 8.5p 8.5p nil 19.7p pre-exceptional gain 32.9p post-exceptional gain Dividend per share 1.85p 1.75p +6% 5.3p Cash balance #22.7m #12.1m +88% #22.7m Highlights for the six months ended 30th June 2003: * Good progress in moving the business model to consistent and predictable recurring revenues. * fidessa rental fees and fidessaNet service fees up 48%. * Recurring revenues now represent 49% of total revenues, up from 35% last year. * 11 new fidessaNet orders signed, 6 in Europe, 5 in US. * fidessa workstation product launched at end of Q1 and over 100 positions already in production. * Costs down by 6% before investment in the new fidessa workstation business. * US revenues are up 48% representing 44% of total revenues. Chief Executive, Chris Aspinwall, said: "The difficulties experienced in the financial markets have continued into 2003 and despite some improvements in the market towards the end of Q2 it is too early to predict any sustained change in trading conditions. Despite the conditions we have continued to make good progress moving our business model away from more variable consultancy revenues towards the more consistent and predictable recurring revenues generated by our enterprise rental and fidessaNet services. Revenue from these sources has increased by 48% compared to the same period last year, and recurring revenue now represents 49% of our overall revenues. As expected, consultancy revenues have come under continued pressure and are down 23% on the first half of last year. However, cost control has been tightened further, with costs down 6% on the same period last year after excluding #0.4 million allocated to development of the new fidessa workstation business. A total of 11 new customers have signed for full implementations of fidessaNet during the first half compared to 5 in the same period last year and 8 in the whole of last year. Our US fidessaNet business continues to be on schedule to achieve break even by the end of this year. Our new fidessa workstation product has made good progress in the three months since its launch at the end of Q1, with over 100 positions already in production and substantially more scheduled to go live over the next few months. Looking ahead we continue to anticipate tough trading conditions. We believe that we will continue to see substantial growth in high quality recurring revenues from our fidessaNet and enterprise rental businesses and are particularly pleased with the momentum developing in our fidessaNet business. We believe that we will see further falls in consultancy revenues in the second half but do not believe that the extent of this fall will materially exceed what we have seen in the first half. In both the US and Europe we are seeing an increasing convergence of our enterprise and fidessaNet businesses and we intend to encourage this trend as we seek to achieve our vision of a single intelligent connectivity network encompassing all the transaction services required for cost efficient trading. This vision will have an impact on consultancy revenues as customers increasingly make use of fidessaNet services rather than taking fidessa products in house. As a result, in the short-term, we expect full year revenues for 2003 to be slightly below those achieved last year, although the quality of revenue (i.e. the % of recurring revenue) will be substantially improved. As consultancy becomes a smaller proportion of our revenues, we expect the negative effect on consultancy to be more than offset by growth in recurring revenues. We believe that our cost control measures will be effective in increasing margins in the established business, but after taking account of the investment in the new fidessa workstation business, we expect overall profit will be slightly below that recorded last year. However, we believe that with the investments we are making in new and existing products, we remain exceptionally well positioned and that the unique proposition and business model royalblue has developed will provide a strong basis for long-term growth." Financial Summary In the six months to 30th June 2003, revenues declined by 5% to #27.9 million, from #29.3 million for the same period last year. We have continued to make good progress in moving our business model away from more variable consultancy revenues towards the more consistent and predictable recurring revenues generated by our enterprise rental and fidessaNet services. Growth from fidessa licence rental and fidessaNet service rental continued to be strong with a combined 48% increase in the period whilst consultancy revenues continued to come under pressure and declined by 23%. During the period, consultancy revenues represented 48% of total revenues (2002: 60%), fidessa licence rentals 27% (2002: 19%), fidessaNet service rentals 12% (2002: 6%) and maintenance 10% (2002: 10%). In total, the recurring revenues were #13.6 million representing 49% of total revenues up from 35% last year. Overseas revenues increased to #16.7 million (2002: #14.5 million) accounting for 60% of total revenues. Operating profit fell by 10% to #3.5 million from #3.9 million in 2002, an operating margin of 12.6% (2002: 13.1%). These figures are after investing #0.4 million in the new fidessa workstation business. Throughout the period there has been a focus on cost control and, excluding the investment in the new fidessa workstation business, our costs have decreased by 6%, a reduction of #1.6 million. These cost savings have not been at the expense of R&D where we have continued to invest in future products. The proportion of staff dedicated to product development has increased to 21% from 18% last year. All of this expenditure was expensed as incurred. Improved interest earnings from higher cash balances and a decrease in the anticipated tax rate have contributed to flat diluted earnings per share of 8.5p. The business continues to have a strong balance sheet and at 30th June 2003 the cash balance was #22.7 million. The cash generated from operating activities was #3.7 million (2002: #2.3 million) and the major outflows were capital expenditure of #1.8 million (2002: #0.4 million), dividends of #1.1 million (2002: #0.9 million) and taxation of #1.0 million (2002: #0.7 million). The Group has no debt, nor any goodwill write off or deferred consideration payable for previous acquisitions. An increased interim dividend of 1.85p per share (2002: 1.75p) will be paid on 6th October 2003 to shareholders on the register on 5th September 2003. Operations Introduction Despite the difficult market conditions, we have continued to make good progress in key areas of the business. In the US, sales of our US domestic trading system have continued with the signing of 5 new deals for fidessaNet systems, the same number as signed in the whole of 2002. Implementation of some of these systems is complete with others due to come on stream during the second half. Our share of the US market is increasing rapidly and we estimate that in the period a little over 4% of US domestic OTC (NASDAQ) flows passed through fidessa systems. We expect this percentage to rise as we progress towards establishing fidessa as the de facto standard for US domestic equity trading. In Europe we have signed a further 6 new deals for fidessaNet systems including one with CDC IXIS Securities for an implementation based in Paris. This deal represents our first fidessaNet deal in mainland Europe and will provide a useful beachhead in establishing the fidessaNet service in this region. In addition to the new customers we have signed for fidessaNet, we have also seen a marked increase in the volume of order and executions flowing through the service. Both order and execution volumes have more than doubled and total execution volumes flowing through the fidessaNet service now exceed 750,000 executions per month. Demand has also continued for connectivity services through fidessaNet. This is both for customers taking all their applications through fidessaNet and also for enterprise customers who are increasingly finding fidessaNet a more cost-effective way to achieve the connectivity they need. In both the US and Europe we are seeing an increasing convergence of our enterprise and fidessaNet businesses and we are gradually adapting the structure of our business to best service these new requirements. The change is being driven by enterprise customers using our hosted services for market and client connectivity and also customers looking at internal cost savings by outsourcing their complete enterprise system to royalblue. This convergence also aligns with our vision of a single intelligent connectivity network encompassing all transaction services required for cost efficient trading. As a result, we are introducing a new model of managed enterprise systems within our fidessaNet business, where we will configure and run an enterprise system on behalf of a client in our data centres. We will also provide the staff to manage the service from end to end including onsite consultancy where appropriate. This new model is much closer to the complete outsourcing of a fidessa system with costing that works out around one third less expensive than an enterprise customer running the system themselves in house. Europe In Europe we have seen more focus from clients on the automation of the complete lifecycle from Indications of Interest (IoIs), through Order Processing to Trade Adverts (TAs). As a result the number of destinations, including both direct and indirect networks, has continued to grow, resulting in more pressure to implement workflow management software. This has benefited our new fidessaExpress offering which has now gone live. In the first implementation, connectivity to two large buy-side firms has been migrated across to the fidessaExpress architecture and these connections are now available to any customer connected to the service. The new fidessaExpress IoI and TA service has also gone live managing the delivery of IoIs and TAs to buy-side clients over the third party networks from Bloomberg, Autex and Thomson Financial. This service allows IoIs and TAs to be managed directly from the orders and trades flowing through fidessa. Exchange upgrades continued throughout the first half. These included: * the introduction of a Central Counterparty for the Frankfurt market in March. * the introduction of SETS 6.1 in March for order modification and enhanced dealing capacities in London. * SuperMontage being introduced on NASDAQ Europe in March, and NASDAQ Deutschland support being introduced within fidessa. Subsequently NASDAQ has announced that NASDAQ Europe is to be closed but NASDAQ Deutschland will remain. * all Scandinavian markets migrated to SAXESS 4.0 in May * Virt-X and SWX upgraded to a new version of software in May In total 85 customer gateway upgrades were performed in the first half of 2003. Within fidessaNet we have also benefited from the decision by SunGard to scale back the BRASS product in the European market. SunGard had entered the European market with this product in the 1990's and had secured a small number of customers. These customers are now looking to migrate across to another platform with royalblue particularly well placed to benefit from this business. We believe that this decision by SunGard demonstrates the difficulties faced by any new entrant in addressing the complex, multi-currency business flows in the European market. During the first half we have seen the majority of fidessaNet and enterprise rental customers renew as their contracts have expired. However, we have seen one enterprise customer switch to a smaller fidessaNet implementation as they have scaled back their operations in the UK and one fidessaNet customer has ceased use of fidessaNet and has taken the fidessa workstation as their business no longer justifies the level of automation provided by fidessaNet. In the first half royalblue received the Securities Industry Software award for "Ability to Deliver on Time and on Budget". North America In North America, we have continued to make good progress with revenues increased by 48% and 5 new fidessaNet systems sold. One of these fidessaNet systems was to Brokerage America, a wholesaler and one of the largest NASDAQ market makers, making a market in over 3,000 securities. This system is the largest fidessaNet system implemented to date and is sized to handle execution volumes peaking at over 75,000 orders per day. The new fidessa V5 architecture was essential to ensure that fidessaNet could meet and exceed the volume expectation of this key client. Our new products have worked well in giving us a unique offering and the ability to roll up several disparate functional areas into a single integrated solution. We have seen an example of this at Gerard Klauer Mattison (GKM) where a single fidessaNet implementation has been selected to replace four individual systems currently used by the client. The systems replaced are their current OTC (NASDAQ) order management system, their listed (NYSE) order management system, their quote management system and their buy-side connectivity solution. We are seeing more of this across the business where existing fidessaNet customers are now taking additional fidessaNet services (such as IMAR - Indications of Interest management) to replace other systems that were not previously integrated into their business flows. The use of a single fidessa solution in place of disparate systems not only provides customers with a much more integrated solution but also one which is much more cost effective and easier to support going forward. As a result of the general financial instability of communications and data centre providers we started a migration programme in 2002 to build and operate our own data centre and resilient communications network in the US. This programme is now approaching completion. The new data centre, based in New York city, is fully operational and customers have now been seamlessly migrated across to this new centre. In addition, the majority of existing fidessaNet customers (and all new customers) are now operating on our own managed communication service. Our former primary data centre based in New Jersey has now become our backup data centre and our former backup data centre on Long Island has been closed. In the US market we continue to see an evolution of the trading model as firms adapt to SuperMontage and recognise that there is no longer a best price from a single exchange. This has occurred as a number of the ECNs have decided not to participate in SuperMontage as they now view NASDAQ as a competitor. In addition, there is a growing drive to combine listed and OTC trading onto the same desk and this benefits royalblue as one of the first providers of a fully integrated trading product for both markets. royalblue was voted the best vendor in the sell-side Order Management System category in an independent survey carried out by Risk Waters magazine, a specialist publication focussing on the US securities industry. According to Risk Waters, the vote "justifying the company's claims that its fidessa system is now the market-leading trading system chosen by a majority of the world's top-tier investment firms". This survey was focussed specifically on US domestic trading products, and royalblue's win underlines the progress being made in establishing fidessa as the de facto standard for US domestic trading. Asia Throughout Asia trading conditions have remained extremely difficult with the occurrence of the SARS virus earlier in the year affecting Hong Kong in particular as many customers closed their offices and restricted meetings with external parties. In Hong Kong our primary focus has continued to be to help customers reduce the costs associated with handling order flow. This has manifested in a number of initiatives looking at the use of FIX (the industry standard Financial Information eXchange protocol) and the fidessa workstation to make connectivity easier between the buy-side and the sell-side. These initiatives have yet to result in any significant orders. As a result of the challenging conditions in Hong Kong, royalblue reduced its headcount in this office to ensure costs remained aligned with expected revenues from the installed customer base. The Japanese domestic market, which has a significant percentage of legacy trading systems, continues to show potential although progress is likely to be slow. We have continued with localisation of the product providing Japanese language versions, Japanese trade reporting models and a Japanese market-making product. We have also heightened our market profile through a number of seminars and trade shows, which have extended our market contacts in the Japanese domestic market. As the result we have signed a substantial order with Shinko Securities, one of the top five domestic brokerages, for a fidessa system to support their local trading requirements. Shinko is affiliated with Mizuho Securities (an existing royalblue customer and the largest domestic brokerage) and the deal with Shinko reflects Mizuho's view that fidessa is the best and most scalable trading platform in the Japanese market. A further retraction of foreign members (European and US investment banks) from the Japanese market has balanced some domestic market growth in the first half. However, the recent go-live of our order management product, OMAR V5, with the global order routing between Tokyo, London and New York and the continuing expansion in pan-Asian trading out of Japan has meant that even in the difficult market conditions, fidessa user numbers have remained relatively static. Our continued investment in the V5 platform and the continuing growth of transaction volumes in the Japanese market continues to leave us well positioned if a recovery in the Asian markets does eventually materialise. Product Development Despite the difficult market conditions we have maintained our product development programme to ensure that fidessa remains the leading product within the market. However, the structure of the business is evolving rapidly and with the services offered by fidessaNet expanding and the increased opportunities we are seeing across the market, we are continuing to see significant demand for major new products. Recent examples of this include the fidessaExpress product and the fidessa workstation which were conceived last year and have been successfully brought into production during the first half. fidessaExpress went into production, as planned during Q2, in both London and New York to support Indications of Interest, Trade Adverts and buy-side order flow. The next version of fidessaExpress is due for delivery in Q3 and will provide support for new business flows and better interconnection between fidessaNet customers. These enhancements will include the ability to route order flow between fidessaNet customers and to route order flow out over FIX to additional broking services. This is an exciting and important area of development and provides the potential to add significant value to our installed fidessaNet customer base. Following the successful release of the fidessa workstation in March a number of major enhancements are planned for release in Q3. Specifically, version 2 will include real-time news from Dow Jones Newswires, enhanced price display pages, a new stock summary page, sophisticated charting analytics and additional data. The new data will include more world indices, forex cross rates, benchmark commodities and index futures. Technical enhancements in this release will also facilitate the remote upgrading of the workstation which will be key to cost effective management of the system as the user base expands. The Basket Execution and Management (BEAM) application has progressed rapidly during the first half to provide an initial beta release, which has been well received. We are now taking this beta forward in partnership with a major US brokerage to deliver a production basket trading application at the end of the year. BEAM when combined with the V5 OMAR product, and fidessa execution gateways for all the major markets around the world, will deliver a level of integration and performance which is not available from any other supplier and which is marketable in all the major financial centres around the world. The V5 programme is gathering momentum: OMAR V5 has now been successfully rolled out in London, Tokyo and New York to support global order flow between these centres. Work is now well progressed with OMAR 5.1, which will be released in Q3 to coincide with the release of TMAR (Trade Management and Routing) and PMAC (Position Management and Consolidation) on the new 64-bit architecture. Major customers in New York, Paris and Tokyo are working with us on a beta programme for this software. EMMA (European Multi Market Access) V5 was released in June concluding an 8 month development programme. In the current very volatile markets, throughput and speed to market are more important than ever, and EMMA V5 offers substantial improvements in these areas. This release also provides major enhancements in terms of usability for the trader in response to feedback from customers and has four new high performance market gateways covering Euronext, London, SWX / Virt-X and Xetra. Based on the core of the EMMA V5 system, development of CAMA (Canadian Market Access), which has been carried out in New York, is nearly complete and due for delivery to customers in Q3 providing support for the Toronto and Vancouver exchanges. In New York the main development focus during the first half of the year has been a range of enhancements to our fidessaMontage product to ensure that it is optimised in terms of performance and usability in the NASDAQ market. This has led to successful rollout of the product, during the first half, with a number of very high profile NASDAQ market making firms. We believe that fidessaMontage is now well placed to be a market leader in what is the fastest moving and aggressive electronic market in the world. A number of further enhancements are already planned including an upgrade to the latest 64-bit fidessa technology. Lava Patent Lawsuit In June 2003 royalblue noted the announcement released by Lava Trading Inc. that it had filed a patent infringement claim in the US against royalblue. The patent relates to the concept of displaying prices from more than one source (ECN) on a single screen in the US. Accordingly, even if the allegations in the complaint were found to be true, the claim could only relate to a small element of the royalblue product suite. royalblue has been aware of Lava's patent and well before the initiation of any suit against it, royalblue proactively sought legal advice regarding the validity of Lava's patent, and the merits of any claim that Lava might bring against it. Based upon the legal advice it received, royalblue believes Lava's claims are without merit. While royalblue cannot predict the outcome of the Lava lawsuit, it intends to vigorously defend against Lava's claims. Outlook Looking ahead we expect the market to remain difficult into the second half of the year. However, we believe that our strategy of offering an integrated platform of trading services, each one leveraging off the others will continue to prove a valuable proposition in the global trading markets. This will ensure that we continue to experience strong growth in recurring revenues from our fidessaNet and enterprise rental businesses. At the same time, we believe that the consultancy business in our sector has changed permanently and that our business model will further encourage this change. As a result we believe we will see a further decline in consultancy revenues in the second half with the potential for more modest declines or flat consultancy revenues in 2004. We will continue our product development programme, and will maintain the investment in our core product set so that we can continue to bring more and better products to market. In addition, we believe that we will undertake more business expansions, such as the fidessa workstation, moving us into new market areas. These developments may take the form of an acquisition or, alternatively, as with our workstation, where we can achieve better results or offer better value through direct development, we will use this approach. We are continuing to develop the value of the fidessa brand and the range of product we can deliver and as we do so our market offering becomes more and more unique. This is reflected in the strong growth we are experiencing not just in the recurring revenues but also in the amount of order flow being handled by the fidessa products despite the financial industry facing one of its most difficult periods. It is unfortunate that this strong growth has been offset by falls in consultancy, but whereas consultancy revenues are transient and susceptible to market conditions, the recurring revenues from the fidessa and fidessaNet business represent a much deeper value to the market and are correspondingly much more secure revenue streams. Overall, we still believe that we are exceptionally well positioned within a dynamic and long-term market and that the unique proposition and business model royalblue has developed will provide a strong basis for long-term growth. enquiries: John Hamer, Chairman Edward Bridges, Financial Dynamics Chris Aspinwall, Chief Executive Ben Way, Financial Dynamics Andy Malpass, Finance Director Tel: 020 7831 3113 www.royalblue.com Fax: 020 7831 6341 Tel: 01483 206300 Fax: 01483 206301 Consolidated Profit and Loss Account for the six months ended 30th June 2003 2003 2002 2002 6 months 6 months 12 months to 30th June to 30th June to 31st December Unaudited Unaudited Audited Notes #'000 #'000 #'000 Turnover 2 27,857 29,315 57,006 Operating profit 3,523 3,853 8,226 Exceptional items: Sale of associated undertaking - - 3,683 Sale of discontinued operation - - 500 _______ _______ _______ Profit on ordinary activities before interest 3,523 3,853 12,409 Net interest receivable 324 131 610 Income from other fixed asset investments - - 39 _______ _______ _______ Profit on ordinary activities before taxation 3,847 3,984 13,058 Taxation on profit on ordinary activities 3 (1,165) (1,292) (2,638) _______ _______ _______ Profit on ordinary activities after taxation 2,682 2,692 10,420 Dividends paid and proposed 4 (576) (518) (1,591) _______ _______ _______ Retained profits for the period 2,106 2,174 8,829 _______ _______ _______ Earnings per share: 5 Basic - pre-exceptional gain 8.8p 9.2p 21.2p Diluted - pre-exceptional gain 8.5p 8.5p 19.7p Basic - total operations 8.8p 9.2p 35.4p Diluted - total operations 8.5p 8.5p 32.9p Consolidated Statement of Total Recognised Gains and Losses for the six months ended 30th June 2003 2003 2002 2002 6 months 6 months 12 months to 30th June to 30th June to 31st December #'000 #'000 #'000 Profit for period 2,682 2,692 10,420 Differences on exchange on re-translation of net assets of overseas undertaking (199) (104) (376) Prior year adjustment re: deferred tax - 1,033 1,033 _______ _______ _______ Total recognised gains and losses 2,483 3,621 11,077 _______ _______ _______ Consolidated Balance Sheet at 30th June 2003 2003 2002 2002 30th June 30th June 31st December Unaudited Unaudited Audited #'000 #'000 #'000 Fixed Assets Tangible fixed assets 5,081 5,032 4,705 Investments - 49 - Investment in own shares 2,164 2,206 2,196 7,245 7,287 6,901 Current assets Debtors 15,782 18,613 14,761 Cash and short-term investments 22,749 12,140 22,676 38,531 30,753 37,437 Creditors: Amounts falling due within one year (16,326) (16,937) (16,799) Net current assets 22,205 13,816 20,638 Total assets less current liabilities 29,450 21,103 27,539 Creditors: Amounts falling due after more than one year (417) (467) (442) ______ ______ ______ Net assets 29,033 20,636 27,097 ______ ______ ______ Capital and reserves Called up share capital 3,171 3,064 3,142 Share premium account 11,580 10,371 11,580 Profit and loss account 14,282 7,201 12,375 ______ ______ ______ Total equity shareholders' funds 29,033 20,636 27,097 ______ ______ ______ Consolidated Cash Flow Statement for the six months ended 30th June 2003 2003 2002 2002 6 months 6 months 12 months to to 30th to 30th 31st December June June Unaudited Unaudited Restated #'000 #'000 #'000 Operating profit 3,523 3,853 8,226 Depreciation charge 1,362 1,466 2,876 (Increase)/decrease in working capital (1,161) (2,981) 862 Other items (1) 7 (7) _______ _______ _______ Net cash inflow from operating activities 3,723 2,345 11,957 Returns on investments and servicing of finance 324 131 649 Taxation paid (1,042) (698) (2,781) Capital expenditure and financial investments (1,760) (427) 2,609 Equity dividends paid (1,082) (936) (1,452) _______ _______ _______ Net cash inflow before financing 163 415 10,982 Management of liquid resources 749 78 (128) Financing 29 17 96 _______ _______ _______ Increase in cash 941 510 10,950 _______ _______ _______ Notes to The Interim Statement 1. Basis of preparation The interim financial statements are unaudited but have been reviewed by KPMG Audit Plc and their report is set out below. The interim statement has been prepared on the basis of the accounting policies as set out in the annual statements for the year ended 31st December 2002. The financial information contained in this interim statement does not amount to statutory accounts within the meaning of section 240 Companies Act 1985. The figures for the year ended 31st December 2002 are extracted from the statutory accounts of royalblue group plc. The statutory accounts for that year have been reported on by the company's auditors and delivered to the Registrar of Companies. The report of the auditors was unqualified and did not contain a statement under section 237 (2) or (3) Companies Act 1985. The Consolidated Cash Flow Statement for the 12 months to 31st December 2002 has been restated to reflect an amendment for the transfer from cash to liquid resources in the year, there being no change to the Profit & Loss Account or Balance Sheet. 2. Analysis of turnover Turnover is analysed by geographic destination as follows: 2003 2002 2002 6 months to 6 months to 12 months to 30th June 30th June 31st December Unaudited Unaudited Audited #'000 #'000 #'000 Continuing operations United Kingdom 11,122 14,830 26,534 USA & Canada 12,388 8,343 18,465 Continental Europe 1,511 2,018 3,755 Rest of World 2,836 4,124 8,252 _______ _______ _______ 27,857 29,315 57,006 _______ _______ _______ 3. Taxation The charge for taxation for the six months ended 30th June 2003 reflects the anticipated effective rate for the period. 4. Dividend on ordinary shares An interim dividend of 1.85p pence per share is declared and will be paid on 6th October 2003 to shareholders on the register on 5th September 2003. 5. Earnings per share The calculation of basic earnings per share is based on the profit attributable to shareholders divided by 30,334,772 ordinary shares (2002: 29,318,422 ordinary shares). The number of shares is based on the weighted average number of shares in issue during the period less the shares owned by the royalblue group plc Employee Benefit Trust. The number of shares in issue at 30th June 2003 was 31,712,805 (2002: 30,639,240). The diluted earnings per share is based on 31,649,545 ordinary shares (2002: 31,795,312 ordinary shares). The diluted earnings per share have been calculated using an average share price of 298p (2002: 529p). 6. Circulation to shareholders Copies of this interim report will be sent to shareholders and copies will be available to the public at the Company's registered office, Dukes Court, Duke Street, Woking, Surrey GU21 5BH. Independent Review Report by KPMG Audit Plc to royalblue group plc Introduction We have been engaged by the company to review the financial information set out on pages 8 to 12 and we have read the other information contained in the interim report and considered whether it contains any apparent misstatements or material inconsistencies with the financial information. This report is made solely to the company in accordance with the terms of our engagement to assist the company in meeting the requirements of the Listing Rules of the Financial Services Authority. Our review has been undertaken so that we might state to the company those matters we are required to state to it in this report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the company for our review work, for this report, or for the conclusions we have reached. Directors' responsibilities The interim report, including the financial information contained therein, is the responsibility of, and has been approved by, the directors. The directors are responsible for preparing the interim report in accordance with the Listing Rules which require that the accounting policies and presentation applied to the interim figures should be consistent with those applied in preparing the preceding annual accounts except where they are to be changed in the next annual accounts in which case any changes, and the reasons for them, are to be disclosed. Review work performed We conducted our review in accordance with guidance contained in Bulletin 1999/ 4: Review of interim financial information issued by the Auditing Practices Board for use in the United Kingdom. A review consists principally of making enquiries of group management and applying analytical procedures to the financial information and underlying financial data and based thereon, assessing whether the accounting policies and presentation have been consistently applied unless otherwise disclosed. A review is substantially less in scope than an audit performed in accordance with Auditing Standards and therefore provides a lower level of assurance than an audit. Accordingly we do not express an audit opinion on the financial information. Review conclusion On the basis of our review we are not aware of any material modifications that should be made to the financial information as presented for the six months ended 30th June 2003. KPMG Audit Plc Chartered Accountants Crawley 25th July 2003 This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange END IR RAMRTMMJTBJJ
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