Africa’s leading marketing services group has posted an 11 percent growth in pre-tax profit for the first six months of this year to 578.4 million shillings up from 520.9 million shillings last year as the group’s shares trade in their highest range since 2010.

According to Scangroup’s newly released official unaudited statements, revenue for the six months to June this year has increased 32.4 percent to 2.02 billion shillings from 1.52 billion shillings in the same period last year.

The NSE traded Scangroup shares closed yesterday at KES 57.50 which was their highest closing price since November 2010 according to Bloomberg data. The shares have gained for the past three days adding 4 shillings in the period.

Independent analyst Kimathi Ikiao says the share’s rallying is likely from news of research by Ipsos Synovate published last week showing that Scangroup increased its advertising market share to 77 percent from 70 percent within the three months to March this year (Business Daily).

However by 11.40 a.m. today, the share had dropped 0.87 percent to KES 57.00 despite the improved earnings announcement earlier this morning. This was still the share’s highest trading range since late 2010.

“The company controls a lot of what goes into the media in Sub-Saharan Africa and is in a good position to benefit from more advertising by multinationals because of the Olympics”, Mr. Ikiao further said. Proctor & Gamble and Coca-Cola are some of the multinationals present in Africa currently running Olympics themed advertising campaigns.

Scangroup owns 14 Sub-Saharan companies in advertising, marketing, communication, media and public relations including Scanad and Ogilvy Africa.