Druid Group Plc, which obtained a listing on the London Stock Exchange in November (CI No 3,031) has kept its promises and turned in a set of interim results exactly as it had forecast. The Chertsey, Surrey-based information technology management consultancy group has more than doubled its revenue to 9.4m pounds for the six months to December 31. Pretax profit also doubled to 1.8m pounds on the same period last year. The results are built around the company’s continuing strong association with the SAP AG R/3 product. Druid provides project-related consultancy-based implementation services for SAP. Concern was expressed by City firms at the time of flotation about the reliance on just one product (all bar 5% of revenue was SAP- related). The results provide no information on the split of revenue by activity and the company clearly regards this information as too sensitive to release at the half-year stage. Chairman David Tebbs was keen to play this down, stressing a new business partnership with Oracle Corp as evidence of diversification. The company hopes to reduce reliance on the German product to 85% of total business by year end. Since a management buyout in 1993, the company has continued to grow with the kind of pace that seems to be the norm in this boom sector. Staff numbers are up to 231 from 107 this time last year and Druid Group admits that it is having to work very hard to maintain its friendly ‘club’ culture while moving to a bigger scale of operations. Part of the reason for the flotation was the need to put in place an exit route for its employee share ownership scheme. Druid Group has a well-established scheme in place with participation from 53% of staff at December 31 last year. Most firms will claim purely altruistic reasons for running these schemes, such as ensuring employees share in the success generated by their own hard work. In reality, without such schemes, companies like Druid would find it impossible to hire and retain the consultants they need. Share incentives are so popular that employees have come to expect them. Druid has declared an interim dividend of 0.8 pence per share for the six months to December 1996.
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