News of an upbeat nature was particularly welcome on such a miserable morning, weather-wise and indeed general news-wise.

St Ives is hardly blazing a trail with the acquisition of Occam DM, but it remains a significant acquisition that propels the group into a new [potentially] high-margin area that should be advantageous in terms of cross-selling the group's services, too. No doubt the plc will have studied the impact of similar acquisitions by its contemporaries including Lateral Group, Communisis, Tangent and CDMS.

Communisis, for example, has stated that it expects margins in its technology and services wing (which includes the acquired Absolute Intuistic) to be 25%-plus. The EBITDA margin at Occam will be 24% if its 2010 results meet expectations.

And talking of margins, how about this from the St Ives statement: "... we now expect that the group's operating results for the year ending 30 July 2010 will be ahead of management's previous expectations." Hallelujah! Okay, this is due in no small part to what can be described as self-help in terms of reducing costs, etc, but I couldn't help but smile at an accompanying comment relating specifically to the performance in its post-IPC magazines wing.

At the time of the contract loss a fellow St Ives watcher made a jokey aside about it 'not being material to earnings, except perhaps in a positive way'. Many a true word is indeed spoken in jest, as efforts to replace the IPC volume with a work mix that is more favourable to St Ives resulted in the following notable remark in today's announcement: "This, we believe, will lead to an improvement in [magazine] margins."

Never a dull moment in this game, and it's only going to get more and more interesting over the next few weeks as that IPC work moves to its new home.