LONDON (ShareCast) - Digital media content provider One Media iP Group has achieved an increase in revenue and profits in its first annual results since listing on AIM in April 2013.

The company - which exploits intellectual digital property rights of music, video and spoken word - posted a 26.8% increase in revenue to £2.64m in the year ended October 31st 2013.

Pre-tax profit from continuing operations grew 22.4% to £523,648.

“Well the board is very pleased with the results when you consider the fact we floated the business in 2013,” Chief Executive Michael Infante told Sharecast/Digitallook.

"It was a very rapid transaction but we still managed to deliver sterling results."

Infante said revenues were driven by music licences as the number of online platforms grew, and sites such as Spotify and YouTube picked up more content. The company now owns about 140,000 tracks of music.

The group has been expanding the video side of its business with the acquisition of more content, which is expected to boost results in the coming year.

OneMedia has bought the rights to TV programmes Sooty, The Adventures of Skippy and Alien Autopsy.

“All of this is building our wardrobe of content,” Infante said.

“It’s about buying content at a time where the value of its digital net worth is not yet fully realised.”

In an effort to protect content, Infante said the company has been working closely alongside regulators and copy protection groups to combat piracy.

While Infante feels they have made strong progress in closing down piracy sites, he said they still had a long way to go to stop online theft all together.

He encouraged search engines like Google to take greater action against copyright infringement.

Google has taken a softer approach to piracy in the past but is now more conflicted as it derives some of its revenues through the sale of music, TV and movies on Google Play, Infante pointed out.

Despite the hurdle, the One Media executive expects to see continued growth this year as the number of channels streaming their content increases. Amazon, for instance, is reportedly in talks to launch a new music download and streaming site that could bolster OneMedia’s revenues.

In the new financial year, Infante said the company would only consider acquisitions that were certain to add to growth. He said the group has always been debt free and cash generative and “what we don’t really want to be doing is breaking that model”.

The firm had cash balances of 31.6m at the end of the financial year, compared to £368,655 in 2012.

The group cut its dividend slightly to £70,145 from £70,974 the prior year, which Finance Director Nigel Smethers stressed would benefit investors in the long-run.

“We were conscious that new investors didn’t want us distributing money we had raised off their backs”.

Shares fell 4.11% to 17.50p at 11:07 on Wednesday.

RD

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