Telephony company IMS Group Ltd of Leeds, UK, has applied for a listing on the London Stock Exchange and is hoping to get 60% of its shares away by way of a placing. IMS was set up as part of the William Hill organization in 1988 as a computerized sports information service, but left the William Hill organization in a management buyout in 1992. The company has been expanded and developed into a broader computerized telephony service with calls being handled at its automatic call handling center in Leeds, which IMS claims to be the largest in the UK with 2,400 lines dealing with services from sports results to competitions run by television broadcasting companies. The system has been redeveloped to deal with all manner of automatic call services, incorporating all national telephone codes with non-geographical prefixes. IMS reported an annual revenue of 12.4m pounds for the year to October 30, up from 10.3 pounds the previous year and reported a profit of 3.3m pounds before goodwill amortization and organization costs, up from 2.7m pounds in 1995. Deputy managing director Paul Rouse says that the company is looking for a valuation of 40m pounds at flotation. We want to give ourselves the opportunity to expand the business and floating seemed to be the way to go, he commented. Broker James Capel will be handling the placing for the company.
