London-based brand experience agency Jack Morton Worldwide has filed a loss after tax of £69k for 2010, despite a 5 per cent increase in turnover to £40.2m. Gross profit dipped by 12 per cent to £9.2m for the year ended 31 December and managing director EMEA, Julian Pullan said this was because it had reduced its margins to offer clients a better deal.

“We judge success on how much business clients are putting through us and looking at the turnover you can see this has increased,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of large clients with large volume business and they are getting a very good deal on that."

As well as reduced margins, profits were also impacted by a reduction in foreign exchange gain, close to £1m. It was this income which buoyed profit after tax to £1.3m in 2009.

No dividend was paid for the year, however shareholders’ funds remained strong at £13.4m (£13.5m 2009). Net current assets stand at £11.3m, with cash at bank and in hand of £12m. Employee costs rose marginally to £5.2m, with staff numbers increased by five during the year, to 87.

Looking at turnover broken down by the region in which events were delivered, there was a 33 per cent drop in the UK (to £9.4m), while the rest of Europe enjoyed a 35 per cent increase (to £24m). Turnover from events in the rest of the world remained constant, at £6.9m.

Pullan said: “We deliver most of our events outside of the UK, especially now with the drop off in government work. The drop in UK turnover is not alarming, it is probably reflective of one big event which was organised in the UK in 2009 and moved to another country the following year."

He added that an improved performance was predicted for 2011: “We had good growth in the first half of the year. Overall we should see an improvement on 2010 and 2012 is looking very good indeed, with quite a lot of Olympics related work.”

Pictured: Julian Pullan, managing director EMEA, Jack Morton Worldwide