Tre Kronor is officially the best media agency in Sweden. For the third time in four years, Tre Kronor Media has been awarded the coveted top prize during Stockholm Media Week.

– We are immensely proud and would like to thank our amazing clients and devoted colleagues, Niclas Fröberg, CEO, Tre Kronor Media

Today, Tre Kronor Media was awarded “Agency of the Year”. It is the third time the agency wins the first prize and is a welcome comeback after last year’s runner-up position.

Tre Kronor has a great track record in the two different competitions in Sweden. Both are entirely based on clients’ appraisal and in the last four years, Tre Kronor has been in the top three in both. The actual results are: first, first, first, first, second, second, third and first.

During the same period, Tre Kronor has grown from seven employees and a turnover of 125 million SEK to 42 employees and a turnover of approx. 380 million SEK.

– We owe our success to our clients. They are demanding, knowledgeable and keep us on our toes, Niclas Fröberg added.

– Our goal is to improve even further. We are fully aware that the demands in today’s media landscape are only increasing and our way of meeting them is to work even closer with our clients. That’s our way to remain on top, concludes Niclas Fröberg.

The UCP associated company CCCP Media AB acquires HowCom and simultaneously changes names to HowCom AB. HowCom AB also creates HowCom Evolution AB, which will focus on research, business and strategic development. Fredrik Lundgren is the CEO of HowCom Evolution.

For the full year the UCP net revenues have increased by 15,8% and gross profit by 11,6%. The EBITDA before impairment of Goodwill has improved by 36.3%. Much work has been done to reduce costs by cutting direct cost with 9% and indirect cost by optimising the Tre Kronor organisation and its processes. Included in the cost-side are some one-off costs needed in order to reduce the long-term cost structure.

In order to show the fantastic development of the whole group we have gathered the aggregated media spend for all the companies in the group including minority interest companies. Together all companies in the group have increased the media billing by 73%, whereas our share of this media spend has increased by 39%. During the year we increased our staff in Tre Kronor and Nyheter 365 by 12 people, with 14 joining and 2 leaving, making the total 45 people.

 
Last quarter UCP improved net revenues by 16,8% and gross profit by 19,9% towards the last quarter of last year.

 

Parallel to growing the existing organisations with new clients, we have in the first quarter 2013 made investments in growing the group of companies by launching Tre Kronor Denmark as a subsidiary and making a minority stake investment in Vision in Media Limited, which operates in the UK.

 
Looking forward, our aim is to deliver a break-even EBITDA for the full year 2013.

 
The complete report can be viewed here.

 
Stockholm, Sweden 15th of April 2013

 
Niclas Fröberg
Chairman of the Board

We will have this sign until we post our financial result the 15 of April. Previous years we have always published our year end results the 15th of April each year which has been fine when operating under the OTC QB. In this current tier you need to report the 1st of April.

We are now aware and will adapt our reporting standards accordingly and the 15th of April we will get back the Limited information tier sign at the OTC market. As result, this has encouraged us to investigate how we can become current reporting OTC company.

The well-known charity organization SOS Children’s Villages have chosen Tre Kronor as their new media agency. For Tre Kronor, the new client is really something special.

Niclas Fröberg, CEO, Tre Kronor:
– We are very fortunate and proud that SOS Children’s Villages have chosen to work with us. We look forward to getting started together with the other great partners that SOS have assembled.

SOS Children’s Villages find themselves in the next phase of their development, according to Head of communications Elisabeth Stahlenius and adding Tre Kronor to the mix is an important step.

Elisabeth Stahlenius, Head of Communications, SOS Children’s Villages:

– Tre Kronor’s passion and competency made our choice easy and our belief is that our cooperation will energize both us and our partners.

NEW CLIENTS

Tre Kronor Sweden: Göta Lejon, SOS-Barnbyar and Vitamin Well.

Tre Kronor Danmark: Forex Bank and Maria Casino.

Nyheter 365: Memira, Admiral markets and Arvid Nordquist.

RECRUITMENTS

Tre Kronor Create: Jessica Troedson as Head of Tre Kronor Create.

Tre Kronor Danmark: Ulrik Thyregod, Trading Director

Nyheter 365: Lukas Rosman, editor.

Tre Kronor Danmark is now officially part of the media agency association in Denmark and Tre Kronor Sweden came in third in the competition Agency of the Year this year in the category Media Agencies by Regi.

For corporate information about SAS please visit: www.sasgroup.net

“We are very proud to announce that we are now working with SAS as our client which is one of the strongest brands in Europe and one of the most professional marketing teams.”

Niclas Fröberg, Chairman UCP

The Q3 2012 report is now available here.

The focus is still to cut costs and gain new clients. In addition to the report we would like to share information about the operations in our subsidiaries. We have been invited to several large client pitches, some of which still have not been finalized. Tre Kronor has won OK Money, Nyheter365 has won Synoptik and Glamox Luxo. The aggregated media spend in our subsidiaries and the companies in which we hold minority holdings, have increased by 93 % compared with the same nine-month period last year.

A recent report from Plimsol World Analysis concerning the Media Agencies (Nordic), Oct 2012, ranked the fastest growing media agencies in the Nordics, placing Insight A/S as #1 and Tre Kronor as #4. Tre Kronor is about to open its Danish operations and we are proud to announce the recruitment of Henrik von Bahr (LinkedIn) as Country Manager in Denmark. Tre Kronor Denmark will be operational as of January 1, 2013.

Niclas Fröberg

Chairman

Getting access takes 36 hours after which we will disclose our financial statement, balance sheet and number of shares outstanding so that UCP shifts category from no information to limited information.

Even though during the first six months Tre Kronor obtained several new clients as previously communicated (including namely Arvid Nordquist Nordic and MTG), we anticipate that clients’ reduced marketing budgets generally will impact the company’s net revenues during the second half of this year.

Gross margin has increased during the second quarter. Due to an impairment of good will the group´s profits were lower for the first half of this year compared to the same period last year. However excluding the impairment of good will the group´s results have improved overall and the group´s net loss was lower for the six months ending June 30 of this year compared to the same period last year. Finally, UCP has managed to continue to decrease its cost structure further following the filing of form 15 by continuing to repay portions of its outstanding loans.

Insight AS shows continued growth and high profitability in Norway. CCCP Media has won new accounts in addition to Gina Tricot Nordic and Germany. Beginning this fall we anticipate UCP will face certain new challenges as a result of the strong Swedish currency and other macro economic factors that may lead its clients to reduce their marketing budgets. That said, Tre Kronor has also recently been invited to make several large client pitches which we hope will be successful. For further financial information please see published Financial Report Q2 2012 posted here under investor relations “August, 2012: Q2 filing 2012″.


Niclas Fröberg

Chairman

Summing up the start of the year we have experienced relative growth in Tre Kronor Media & Advertising including its subsidiaries. Management´s focus continues to be on organic growth in Tre Kronor by endeavoring to grow the business through both its existing client base and new clients.

In keeping with this strategy, in the first quarter of this year, Tre Kronor won new clients which include, most notably, Arvid Nordquist Nordic, Freixinet Nordic and Weather Pal with content from SMHI. During this time, Tre Kronor also retained its high ranking in the industry by being ranked second in the Stockholm Media Award in May and earlier this year in Dagens Media Agency of the Year, for the third year in a row.

The investment in Insight Media A/S has proven to be a good investment. A 7% stake in the company was re-acquired by the two founders which allowed to strengthen Tre Kronor´s financials while retaining a 23% ownership in Insight.

Management has worked hard to bring down the group´s cost structure over the last several months and managed to reach satisfactory repayment agreements with all of its external creditors. As communicated earlier this year, UCP was able to further reduce costs by filing form 15 and thereby eliminating costs related to SEC reporting and SOX regulations. Despite these efforts, the Company continues to bear a cost structure that is significantly burdensome and continues to depend on Tre Kronor advancing funds from its cash flow and will continue to depend on financing going forward.

Please refer to this section of our web site in the future for further updates.