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St Ives has posted an 11% rise in revenues for 2007 as the company benefits from its focus on higher-margin short-run work.

The printer posted full-year preliminary results for the 53 weeks ending 3 August 2007, showing turnover up 11% year-on-year to £425m and pre-tax profits of £27.6m, up from £24.2m in 2006.

The figures include its nine months of ownership of Service Graphics, which contributed £30.3m to revenues, while the 2006 numbers have been restated to exclude its loss-making disbanded St Ives Financial division.

The results generated earnings per share of 19.80p, maintaining a 17.15p dividend.

Growth areas were in books, where sales grew almost 20%, down to St Ives' investment in equipment, offering fast turnaround times and bespoke post-production services in-house, alongside online services.

Point-of-sale revenues were also strong, accounting for 38% of commercial products revenue and up 17% year-on-year. This is against a backdrop of added-value offerings, such as logistics and asset management.

Exchange rates hampered the US division, which reported revenues of £59.3m, down from £65.1m in 2006. This returned a profit of £1.7m (before other costs) compared with a loss of £241,000 for 2006.

However, St Ives chief executive Brian Edwards maintained that the hurricanes across Florida in 2006 had a material impact on that year's performance, and, additionally, that if exchange rates had remained unchanged, profit would have come in at £1.9m.

Demand for printing CDs, DVDs and other multimedia products also fell, which it said is unlikely to change as media publishers move print operations out to production facilities in areas such as Eastern Europe.

In response, St Ives transferred its multimedia business into its Crayford site, but Edwards remained conservative about the future.

"It's all useful contribution, but it's difficult to support a market. It's not sustainable on its own," he told printweek.com.

He said the company would continue to focus on balancing different types of work, and avoid competing for ultra-competitive, low-margin, long-run contracts.

"We have found that where [work] is personalised, targeted, complex and, by its nature, shorter run, we tend to get a little more margin than in high-volume commodity jobs," he said. "It's providing a service that isn't just about ink on paper."

He added that the company was also "multi-skilling" its workforce so they are able to work on a range of equipment, and moving them around, to cope with seasonal demand and different job specs.

Shares in the company were up 6.88% on the LSE to 229.25p at the time of writing.