Birmingham-based live events venue operator The NEC Group has posted a £23.9m rise in revenues (17.9%) for the year to 31 March 2017.
The figures come from the group's second set of financial results since being acquired by LDC on 1 May 2015. Annual revenues of £157.7m were posted.
The NEC Group owns caterer Amadeus and national ticketing agency The Ticket Factory and has reported EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization) for the trading businesses (including valuation gains on investment properties of £2.6m) of £50.4m, up £18.6m (58%) on the underlying position for the previous year.
The earnings growth reflects improving the use of the NEC campus and city centre venues and further developing ancillary services. New exhibitions, increased levels of non-exhibition activities held at the NEC and the first full year of rentals from Resorts World Birmingham, operated by Genting, also contributed to the figures.
New exhibitions hosted for the first time included Automechanika, Destination Star Trek and the UK Games Expo. These supplement the programme of established exhibitions including Spring Fair, Crufts and the BBC Good Food Show and, more recently introduced formats such as Insomnia, the UK's biggest gaming festival.
The group's two arenas welcomed over 1.4m visitors during the year. International music acts hosted included Adele, Justin Bieber, Drake and Black Sabbath and the arenas also welcomed back Horse of the Year Show, BBC Sports Personality of the Year, Strictly Come Dancing and Cirque du Soleil.
The development of new formats, including the launch of B1 at Arena Birmingham, added further benefits to the business. This new event layout, which is based on and caters for market demand, features both seated and standing options, providing the intimacy of a smaller venue with all the facilities, capabilities and expertise of a world-class arena.
The capital investment programme continued. Capital expenditure of £17.2m was incurred during the financial year, up £600,000 on the previous year, with a focus on projects to enhance the customer experience and drive trading performance. This programme included major enhancements to hospitality facilities at the Genting Arena and further significant refurbishments of in-hall catering facilities at the NEC.
NEC Group CEO Paul Thandi (pictured) commented: "This has been an exceptional year, building on the strong maiden results the group posted 12 months ago.
"As part of our transformation agenda, we are implementing an exciting and focussed strategy which starts with a deep understanding of the needs of our customers and visitors. That understanding is in large part obtained from the insight we draw from data."
Thandi added that there would continue to be a focus on leisure strategy to give visitors more compelling reasons to visit the campus. "This includes two visitor attractions to be delivered by Merlin Entertainments at our NEC and city centre sites in the next 12 months and new long-stay content such as Dinosaurs in the Wild, which we hosted at NEC this summer," he said.
"We are progressing other planned developments on our NEC site within the context of our wider campus Masterplan, and we will continue to extend our footprint through winning third-party venue management contracts and by securing new external opportunities for Amadeus," Thandi continued.
The CEO added that the group was still at an early stage of strategic development. "The initiatives we have recently implemented and those planned, allied with the profile of contracted forward bookings across the group, provide us with confidence that our businesses will continue to grow strongly," he said.
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