NAHL Group PLC Full Year Trading Update (6636B)

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RNS Number : 6636B

NAHL Group PLC

03 February 2020

This announcement is deemed to constitute inside information stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014

3 February 2020

NAHL Group PLC

("NAHL" or the "Group")

Full Year Trading Update

Further to the announcement on 23 December 2019, NAHL (AIM: NAH), the leading consumer marketing and services business focused on the UK legal services market, provides the following update to shareholders.

Trading Update

As previously noted, 2019 was a challenging year. The UK property market contracted further and the Group's Residential Property division made a small loss. Despite performing marginally ahead of expectations, the Personal Injury (PI) division faced competitive pressures and continued panel volatility during the period. This resulted in a higher cost of generating new claims and impacted total volumes and placement, resulting in fewer claims being passed through to the Group's ABS structures.

The Group confirms that its guidance for 2019 underlying earnings* will be within the range previously announced and is likely to be between 7.5% and 10% lower than Board expectations.

2020 Outlook

The Group's Critical Care division traded well in 2019 and the Board expects this to continue into 2020. Despite the difficult backdrop for the UK property market, the Board expects its Residential Property division to grow, albeit from a smaller base. In Personal Injury, there remains considerable uncertainty surrounding key elements of the Government's personal injury reforms, originally planned for April 2020. This continues the volatility in the Group's Panel Law Firm relationships and is expected to delay growth in case processing within the Group's wholly owned law firm, National Accident Law.

The Board is encouraged by the progress made in transforming the business. However, in order to de-risk the Group in the light of market circumstances, the Board has decided to slow the deployment of working capital in the PI business and to suspend the Company's dividend. Consequently, the Board's outlook for 2020 performance is now significantly lower than previous expectations.

* Underlying earnings is based on profit attributable to shareholders of NAHL (i.e. excluding profits attributable to non-controlling interests) before the deduction of non-underlying costs.

For further information please call:

 
NAHL Group plc                                      via finnCap 
 Caroline Brown (Chair)                              Tel: [phone] 
 Russell Atkinson (CEO)                              0500 
 James Saralis (CFO) 
finnCap Ltd (NOMAD & Broker)                        Tel: [phone] 
 Julian Blunt / James Thompson (Corporate Finance)   0500 
 Andrew Burdis (Corporate Broking) 
FTI Consulting (Financial PR)                       Tel: [phone] 
 Alex Beagley                                        1000 
 James Styles 
 Sam Macpherson 
 

Notes to Editors

NAHL Group plc (AIM: NAH) is a leader in the Consumer Legal Services ("CLS") market. The Group provides services and products to individuals and businesses in the CLS market through its three divisions:

-- Personal Injury provides outsourced marketing services to law firms through National Accident Helpline and claims processing services to individuals through Your Law, Law Together and National Accident Law.

-- Critical Care provides a range of specialist services in the catastrophic and serious injury market to both claimants and defendants through Bush and Company Rehabilitation.

-- Residential Property provides marketing services to law firms and conveyancers as well as surveys to individuals through Fitzalan Partners. It also provides property searches through Searches UK.

More information is available at www.nahlgroupplc.co.uk and www.national-accident-helpline.co.uk.

This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact [e-mail] or visit www.rns.com.

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February 03, 2020 02:00 ET (07:00 GMT)