According to StockMarketWire, the company, which owns Malvern House, BrainBox in Vietnam, and LCCI Asia, among other brands, announced that despite a strong performance in Singapore, profit would be around £300,000 but below previous expectations. However, AEC also substantially invested in its Malvern House brand throughout the year, with local partnerships agreed for the establishment of Malvern House colleges in Ireland, Cyprus and Oman (more on this to follow).

In addition to LCCI, the company blamed a weaker than expected performance in Malaysia for the result, as well as a “significant one-off investment programme” to develop its English language teaching brand, Malvern House.

AEC claimed enrolments in Malaysia had continued to be affected by “the turmoil of the Arab Spring”, particularly from North Africa, while LCCI had been hit by reduced demand in Hong Kong as a result of changes to the local educational system. The company said it had also “taken the decision to reduce the group’s offering in Vietnam since the commercial opportunity was not proving attractive enough”.

But the firm said its flagship college in Singapore had performed very well, and it still expected to post a profit for the second half of the year after returning to profitability in the first half. It posted revenues of UK£8.9 million and profit of UK£298,000 to June 2011, and predicted then that sales for the year would be in line with current market forecasts at around £19 million.

“The first half of the year saw us complete rebranding of our English language offering in Singapore and Malaysia”

Chairman, Liam Swords, said at the time, “The first half [of the year] saw us complete our rebranding programme of our English language offering in Singapore and Malaysia, under our Malvern House brand.  We have also been active with other initiatives to develop the business, including further geographic expansion of the Malvern House English language teaching brand and the expansion of the Group’s university relationships.”

Swords said that Malvern House would remain a major focus in the second half of the year: “We expect to invest significantly in the development of the Malvern House brand overseas, which will dampen margins in the short term before the benefits are felt more strongly as we move through the next financial year and beyond”.