Shares digital

St Ives (SIV) – Interims PTP: £12.5m (£10.7m) Divi: 5p (5p)

The printer is still battling on. It continues to win more short-run magazine contracts, typically publications which require less than 50,000 copies per print run. It is also reporting a steady increase in books, but packaging for music items is still declining as less people buy CDs and DVDs. This has created spare capacity which St Ives is trying to fill with more commercial work.

A £40 million per year, four-year contract with Royal Mail won in October 2007 will take nine months to take off. It is managing all production work, including point of sale material and direct mail. St Ives has done work of this kind before, but never to this scale.

Shares says: Market conditions are still horrendous but St Ives is a fighter. Hang in there.

by: Dan Coatsworth