In a year that saw a fragile recovery in some of our markets, dmgi's profits* increased by 14% to £53 million with margins improving by 3% to 23% as a consequence of both good expense control across the division and the operating leverage of our information businesses.

Reported revenue was up £1 million at £231 million. Underlying^† revenues grew by 4%, with strong performances in the property, financial, energy and education sectors which in aggregate grew by 8%, in part mitigated by a decline in our geospatial revenues.

Underlying^† operating profits grew by 16% year-on-year.

Operating profit* from the property information companies increased by 20% to £20 million, with revenues up 10% at £83 million. Underlying^† revenues and operating profits* grew by 10% and 28% respectively due to strong product performance and a slight improvement in residential and commercial property activity.

In the U.S. our market-leading provider of environmental information, Environmental Data Resources ('EDR'), benefited from a slight improvement in commercial property transactions enhancing revenue and this, together with the full effect of cost saving initiatives made in 2009, led to a significant improvement in operating profit*. EDR continues to enhance its position in the lender market and also introduced a property monitoring product during the year.

Landmark Information Group also increased both revenues and operating profits*, despite the continuing difficulties in the UK housing market. We saw some improvement in the early part of the year, enhanced by the stamp duty holiday that expired on 31st December, 2009, but throughout the remainder of the year housing transaction volumes remained similar to the prior year levels, hovering around half of the long-term average. The abolition of Home Information Packs following the General Election in May further disrupted the market, although Landmark accrued limited margin from this relatively short-lived product line.

Landmark made two small acquisitions to enhance our offerings to the property information market in the UK. Calnea, a leading provider of automated valuation models, was acquired in July and the Argyll Environmental acquisition was completed shortly after the end of the year.

dmgi also has a significant investment in BUILDERadius, a property information business. BUILDERadius has built the largest database of building permit data in the US with in excess of 70 million records from cities and counties across the US. It also provides building permit and inspection software ('Blueprince') to municipal governments.

64% of dmgi's revenue was generated by companies operating in the financial, education, energy and geospatial markets. Pleasing growth was experienced in all of these with the exception of geospatial where the continuation of tough market conditions, driven by tight US state and federal budgets, led to a reduction in Sanborn's revenue. In total, revenue in these other markets was up 2% at £148 million and they contributed operating profits* of £36 million, representing 11% growth. The underlying^† revenue and operating profits were higher by 1% and 9% respectively.

In the financial information market, Trepp is the market leader of information to the Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities ('CMBS') market and once again grew revenue and operating profit strongly. Trepp successfully acted as the collateral monitor for CMBS for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as part of the US federal governments Term Asset- Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF). Trepp also developed its core CMBS products significantly during the year and started to expand into adjacent areas.

Lewtan, offering products to both investors and issuers in the Asset-Backed securities market, also enjoyed a good year with record profits buoyed by the successful launch of its ABS Loan product line. A major upgrade of its ABSN et product is to be launched in early 2011.

Hobsons, our education information business, increased underlying^† revenues by 7%. Hobsons provides products to education professionals to assist in the preparation, recruitment, management and advancement of students and continues to increase its market share. In the year almost 200 new clients of its core products were added pushing the customer base to in excess of a thousand colleges in the US. Naviance, the division providing solutions to US high schools, enjoyed an outstanding year adding 890 additional high schools to its client list, taking the total to 4,370 high schools in across the US.

The energy trading markets have remained turbulent, with customer consolidation and lower energy price volatility reducing activity. Despite this backdrop, Genscape was able to increase revenues by 8%. The product range offered by Genscape continues to expand and of particular note was the success of its new oil product line.

dmgi companies are all market leaders in their respective segments and we expect that the combination of continuing investment in core growth initiatives, combined with continuing improvements in market conditions, will drive a modest acceleration of our revenue growth.