St Ives hit by accounting errors

A printing business involved in providing all of Marks & Spencer’s point-of-sale material disclosed “serious” accounting errors today.

St. Ives, which is one of the UK’s largest printing firms, said annual profits would be £2.8m (€4.1m) lower than current market forecasts, reflecting the problems at the company’s point-of-sale printing division.

It said that costs were not properly expensed, while the errors also resulted in over valuation of work-in-progress and in unrecoverable debts. The financial controller of the division has left the business, it added.

Shares fell 11% as investors digested the latest round of bad news from the company, following a profits warning in June. The group, which has been hurt by over-capacity and fierce competition, prints documents for about 30% of the UK’s FTSE 100 companies, as well as magazines including Investors Chronicle and House & Garden.

St. Ives said the errors mostly impacted on the first half of the financial year, covering the period to the end of January.

In half-year results published in April, St Ives said revenues for the point-of-sale division grew significantly, partly as a result of winning a contract to supply Marks & Spencer with all of its point-of-sale requirements last year.