Preliminary results for year ending 31st March 2004 - Supporta plc

CHAIRMANíS STATEMENT
I am pleased to report the results for the year ended 31 March 2004 which show Supporta achieving a small operating profit of 80,000 before exceptional items and goodwill, following a year of considerable change and development. The Group is now well-positioned to record excellent growth from both its recruitment and support services divisions.

The loss before tax for the year was 1.17m (2003: loss of 0.34m) on turnover of 9.88m (2003: 9.43m). These results include a contribution this year of 0.23m (after goodwill amortisation of 0.07m) from the acquisition in January 2004 of Parys Snowdon Payroll Services Limited, comfortably ahead of expectations. The loss per share was 10.40p (2003: 7.04p).

Review of activities
It has been a busy year, culminating in the Group now having a clearer focus and the infrastructure to build a substantial group of businesses providing a range of services predominantly to the public sector.

In September 2003, following the appointment of Gavin Kaye as Chief Executive, the recruitment division was stream-lined with all London operations moving into our new Head Office in Farringdon, London EC1. The recruitment division is now trading profitably. As referred to below, we are intending to increase our social care activities by acquiring a business specialising in the provision of domiciliary care workers to complement our existing well-established Wrencare operation.

The existing recruitment businesses has continued to show signs of improvement since the start of 2004 as the sector recovers from the down-turn over the last few years.

The Board also decided in the Summer of 2004 that it was important to expand the Groupís out-sourcing activities, and in January 2004 completed the acquisition, for an initial consideration of 5m, of Parys Snowdon Payroll Services from Parys Snowdon Group Limited. Parys Snowdon Payroll Services is an independent provider of payroll and pension services to the NHS - processing in excess of 1 million pay-slips a year covering approximately 10 per cent. of the entire NHS payroll. This was followed in April 2004 with the acquisition of SDMS & Co, a specialised provider of payroll systems consultancy for a maximum consideration of 350,000. The entry into this marketplace offers Supporta opportunities for organic growth as well as further acquisitions, such as the remainder of the Parys Snowdon Group referred to below.

Change of name
In January 2004, the company changed its name from Staffing Ventures plc to Supporta plc. This better reflects the wider offering of support services now provided by the Group. Following this name-change, our out-sourcing division, which includes Parys Snowdon Payroll Services, SDMS & Co and the existing back-office payroll provision to the recruitment sector, were all re-branded as Supporta Services on 14 January 2004 and our recruitment division, Wren Recruitment, was re-branded on 28 July 2004 as Supporta Staffing..

Proposed acquisitions
We are pleased to announce today, the proposed acquisitions of Parys Snowdon Group Limited and the business of Quality Care by our Supporta Services and Supporta Staffing divisions respectively.

The Parys Snowdon Group represents the remaining parts of the group from which we acquired our payroll services division earlier this year, and provides IT software and hardware systems, internal audit and a range of managed services principally to the NHS.

Quality Care is a provider of domiciliary care workers into West London local authorities, with synergistic benefits with our existing social care businesses.