KGH Knights Group Holdings Plc

Knights Group Holdings plc

("Knights", the "Company" or the "Group")

Full Year Trading Update

Good performance, in line with expectations

Knights, the legal and professional services business, today provides a trading update for the year ended 30 April 2024.

The Group anticipates full year revenue of c.£150.0m, up 6% compared to the prior year (FY23: £142.1m), with underlying PBT¹ expected to be at least £25.0m, a 16% increase (FY23: £21.6m), within the range of market expectations.

The Group continues to show excellent working capital discipline, with debtor days² as at 30 April 2024 of 28 days (FY23: 30 days) resulting in a strong balance sheet position at the year end.  Net debt³ as at 30 April 2024 is expected to be c.£35.2m, (FY23: £29.2m) after over £11m cash paid in relation to acquisitions, including £2.5m in relation to the Convex Corporate Finance Limited joint venture. As such, the Group retains significant headroom within its £70m revolving credit facility.

Recruitment momentum has been strong, with the number of senior fee earners joining the business up on the prior year. Knights' growing platform, reputation and collaborative culture remain attractive to high calibre professionals, and its corporate model provides a compelling alternative to the partnership model, particularly in the current economic environment.

In the first half of the financial year, the Group strengthened its presence in the North of England, with acquisitions in Newcastle and Carlisle, both of which are integrating and performing well. Having focussed on driving efficiencies and strengthening the Group's operational platform in the financial year, Knights is positioned well to consider selective acquisitions from its healthy pipeline of opportunities, in line with its value accretive acquisition strategy.

In November 2023, Dave Wilson was appointed non-executive Chairman of the Group, bringing extensive experience in scaling businesses organically and through acquisitions, gained over 30 years in international, board-level and operational positions.

 David Beech, CEO of Knights, said: 

"Our people have delivered a good performance during the year. We continued to execute our growth strategy, recruiting high quality talent and driving operational improvements across the business, positioning us well to deliver further growth in FY25."  

Knights will provide a further update on trading with its full year results announcement in July 2024.

Ends

Notes

¹ Underlying PBT is before amortisation of acquired intangibles, non-underlying costs relating to acquisitions, non-recurring finance costs, restructuring costs in the reporting period, and non-underlying share-based payments The Board believes that these underlying figures provide a more meaningful measure of the Group's underlying performance.

²  Debtor days are calculated on a count back basis using the gross debtors at the period end and compared with total fees raised over prior months.

³ Net debt includes cash and cash equivalents, borrowings and acquired debt but excludes lease liabilities.

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Notes to Editors

Knights is a legal and professional services business, ranked within the UK's top 50 largest law firms by revenue. Knights was one of the first law firms in the UK to move from the traditional partnership model to a corporate structure in 2012 and has since grown rapidly. Knights has specialists in all key areas of corporate and commercial law so that it can offer end-to-end support to businesses of all sizes and in all sectors. It is focussed on key UK markets outside London and currently operates from 23 offices located in Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Carlisle, Cheltenham, Chester, Exeter, Kings Hill, Leeds, Leicester, Lincoln, Manchester, Newbury, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Nottingham, Oxford, Portsmouth, Sheffield, Stoke, Teesside, Weybridge, Wilmslow and York.