Newport-based GoCo Group plc has seen profits fall by 45 per cent and revenues stay broadly the same with just a 0.3 per cent rise.

The group, which owns price-comparison website GoCompare.com, made the revelations when it released its results for H1 2019.

In H1-2019 operating profit was £9.5m, down from £17.3m in the same period last year. While revenue was £76m, up from £75.8m in the same period last year.

The group saw customer interations fall by 12.2 per cent, with 13.1m in H1 2019 compared to 14.9m in H1 2018.

And it also reported that savings made by customers has also fallen. Figures releavled that in H1 2019 customers had saved £471m compared to £545m the previous year - a fall of 13.6 per cent.

But the group said it was 'excited' to announce the acquisition of Look After My Bills which, together with weflip, strengthens its proposition in energy savings.

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Look After My Bills has built a significant customer base in excess of 150,000 live customers and following the acquisition, GoCo Group now has more than 175,000 live customers.

A spokesman for the group said: "We believe that, like weflip, the business benefits from a transformative business model with deeper customer relationships, leading to greater loyalty that should deliver sustainable recurring revenue and higher customer lifetime value.

"Look After My Bills has operational and marketing expertise; a proven capability for switching customers, delivering a strong customer experience and acquiring a significant customer base at low cost of acquisition.

"We expect weflip and Look After My Bills to lead to a significantly higher EBITDA (Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) margin profile for GoCo Group and be transformative to group earnings by 2022."

The acquisition complements GoCo Group’s mission of saving people time and money, helping the group to continue to find new ways to free customers from the boredom of sorting household bills.

Sir Peter Wood, chairman of the group, said: “The Group’s H1 2019 results reflect the disciplined performance of the core business alongside the strategic deployment of capital to grow weflip.

"Matthew and the leadership team are progressing at pace, delivering an exciting strategy that meaningfully helps consumers save time and money.

"The acquisition of Look After My Bills positions the group as one of the UK’s fastest growing energy savings services, providing a strong platform from which to continue to significantly grow our customer base and deliver value for our shareholders.”

Matthew Crummack, chief executive officer, said: "The first six months of 2019 continued our transformation into a tech-led business. We maintained our disciplined approach in our price comparison business while working on the development of our new consumer-led proposition, offering up to £250 excess protection for customers.

“AutoSave is building momentum and is in a great position to address the needs of infrequent switchers. Our ambition is to rapidly scale customers and build our energy savings business to grow live customer numbers by at least 25 per cent in the next five months to the end of the year.

“We continue to develop SaveStack, our proprietary technology platform, which is able to power both our own brands and other people’s, as demonstrated in our partnership with CYBG/Virgin Money, providing in app energy switching to banking customers.”