Member Article

YouGov suffers recession slide

Polling and research firm YouGov today reported its first profits fall in eight years as the firm felt the brunt of recession.

The company – known mainly for its political polling in the UK – saw underlying pre-tax profits slide 59% to £3.9 million in the year to 31 July.

The firm said the results suffered due to extra staff taken on the previous year in anticipation of new business which failed to emerge following the slump.

“In simple terms we let our cost base get ahead of our income,” chairman Roger Parry said.

YouGov - which introduced new products such as Recession Tracker and Debt Tracker to monitor how consumers are coping with the downturn - shed nearly 10% of its staff during the period, while underlying revenues fell by 3%.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .