Ewloe based Moneysupermarket first quarter trading ‘in line’ with expectations.

MoneySupermarket.com the Ewloe based price comparison company has said first quarter trading is in line with expectaions, this comes ahead of the firms annual general meeting today.

However, visits to the companies websites have continued to take a significant hit on the back of Google search penalties, these were applied when changes to the Google search engine algorithm bumped key search terms down results pages.

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Revenue between 1st January this and and 31st March were 8% ahead of the same period last year with EBITDA 5% ahead of the same period last year.

The companies money services reported a 4% increase versus the same period last year on a 10% decrease in website visitor volumes.

Revenues from credit products, credit cards, loans, mortgages and debt solutions, were 4% ahead of the same period last year with credit cards, in particular, performing well where competition among providers was particularly strong.

Excluding pay day loans, credit revenues were 16% ahead of the same period last year.

The Group withdrew from the Pay Day Loans market place in the second quarter of 2013. 

Insurance revenues in the first quarter of 2014 were flat on visitor volumes that were 4% lower.

Revenues in Travel were 41% ahead of the first quarter of 2013

Home Services were 59% ahead of the first quarter of 2013.

Revenues generated by MoneySavingExpert.com the website bought from consumer champion Martin Lewis for £87m were more than 30% ahead of last year. 

The Board remains confident in the outlook and overall the Board’s expectations for the year remain unchanged.

Peter Plumb, Chief Executive of MoneySuperMarket.com, said:

“Helped by our increasingly diversified business, this was a good first quarter given the headwinds we’ve faced since last year.  Our investment programme is on track, including the delivery later this year of the best shopping experience for insurance customers, on mobile or desktop.  The investment we are making in technology for the Money business is beginning to work well.

Full statement here (PDF)