Data company cuts back annual losses

May 30 2008 by Alex Turner, Liverpool Daily Post

THE 2008 Grand National contributed to a record month for data specialists GB Group, which yesterday unveiled much-improved annual results.

The Chester-based company provides electronic age and identity verification, which is vital to online retailers guarding against the underage purchase of regulated or restricted products.

On the Saturday of the Grand National festival, GB processed over 250,000 verifications, far higher than the normal daily throughput, which helped revenue to peak in the month at £1.1m.

Without this peak, GB’s data authentication division doubled its turnover for April to £800,000, compared with 2007.

It followed on from a strong second-half performance which saw the group generate profits of £600,000 in the six months to March 31, which reduced its annual loss to £400,000. In 2007, GB lost £1.2m.

Turnover for the year increased 30% to £19.4m, which was boosted by new clients, including Ladbrokes and mobile network Blyk, and from increased volume from existing clients.

At the company’s core is its National Register database of 48m people and households in the UK, which underpins its products and services.

Chief executive Richard Law said: “Most organisations continue to perform age and identity verifications manually using paper-based methods, which is time consuming, costly and potentially inaccurate. Consequently, we remain confident that there is further significant growth potential for the data authentication business and we are seeing increasing evidence of a move from manual to electronic means of verification, both in terms of new customer enquiries and the volume of verifications performed.”

GB has invested in its identity-based marketing services, which enables customer data capture, maintenance and analysis.

It has developed the software it uses for authentication and forms part of its strategy to focus on online services rather than disk-based data products under annual licenses.

More than half of the company’s revenues are now from online services.

alex.turner