Having completed a brace of takeovers in late 2005, Mark Smith – boss of online marketing specialist themutual.net – is in optimistic mood. ‘Basically the acquisitions have transformed the group, making us a far broader entity,’ he enthuses, ‘they have given us a lot more of an identity as a group.’

The first of the newly acquired businesses is EDR, a specialist email marketing agency counting the likes of Capital One amongst its customer base. The second, The iD Factor, is an online research organisation operating along a similar line to AIM peers Research Now and YouGov.

When placed in the context of themutual’s core rewarded-shopping business, the synergies are apparent. The shopping business allows themutual to build detailed profiles of its clients’ buying habits that can then be used, firstly by EDR (along with other marketing lists) to run targeted email advertising campaigns and secondly by iD Factor to identify suitable test samples for online surveys.

The acquisitions are expected to have a strong impact financially too. For the year to April 2006, sales are predicted to more than double to £6.6m, on pre-tax profits up 90% at £1.5m. A profit of £3m is then anticipated for 2007. Trading on a prospective p/e of 19.8, dropping to 10.6 in 12 months, the shares look good value for the medium term.