Volpa, trading as The Cunningly Good Group, is one of Scotland’s leading independent communications agencies.
Cunningly Good Group’s small but specialist team boast a range of skills in marketing, public relations, design and website development. Our aim is to be one of the UK’s top independent agencies, working with ambitious brands, who want to scale, are ready to invest, and who need an agency partner with grit, determination and the experience to help them achieve their potential.
The business is managed by the director Tricia Fox who is also the principal shareholder of Volpa Limited.
Our Key Strengths include:
- Strong integrated marketing campaign delivery proposition which is proving desirable to clients.
- Our breadth of skills and understanding of marketing solutions across a range of different service specialisms.
- A small but talented and highly experienced team who ensure the delivery of outstanding and multi award winning campaigns.
We successfully retained the Communications Management Standard accreditation and Cunningly Good Group is still one of a handful of agencies in Scotland to secure this national standard.
Performance Review
Long term recovery from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic continued throughout this financial year with key challenges being presented from the rise in interest rates on existing borrowing and a slight slowdown in new business.
We continued to focus on longer term cost savings, the progress for which was hampered by very volatile market conditions. Through a combination of factors, we experienced a 30% increase in overhead costs, some of which were associated with an office move that will deliver longer term savings for the business. Cost inflation impacted overall operating profit with a reduction of 36% compared to last year, and net profit was further impacted a 123% increase on interest payments and tax charges related to historical covid debt.
Throughout this period we continued to secure and deliver new business, and turnover increased by 4.4% for the year. There was an increase in fee revenues of 7.4% with no change in chargeable capacity versus the previous twelve months and no loss of skilled personnel.
The market remains volatile with regards to demand for specific services during the trading year, and we experienced particularly high demand for public relations expertise this year (up 27%) and an increase in demand for design skills (up 14%) set against moderate fluctuations in demand for specialist strategic marketing skills and website development (down 2% and 5% respectively). Overall, it was a stable trading year given the external market volatility with the focus being on managing costs inflation and retention of business.
Our gross profit margin for the year improved to 50.5%, but this top line win was dented by the unprecedented increases in operating costs. The increase gross margin does point to an underlying profitability strength in the business that, once covid debts are fully repaid, and inflationary pressures resolve, will have long term commercial value. We still consider that our business recovery plans are continuing to deliver and on track.
We returned an operating profit of 5.4% (£17,891). Interest payments and debt charges of £24,647 meant we returned a net loss of £4,297 after tax. We continue to focus on paying down the higher interest covid debt and have a long-term payment agreement in place with HMRC.
Our financial strategy for 2025-26 is to continue to make use of our profit margins to make capital repayments against the more expensive covid debts, reducing interest payments, strengthening the balance sheet and maximising profitability.
Key Financial Ratios:
YE 2025 YE 2024
Operating Profit 5.4% 9.01%
Gross Profit Margin 50.5% 42.43%
Current Ratio 0.94 1.24
Economic Climate
The economic climate in the UK now seems to be perpetually challenging. This year we’ve experienced rising costs across our supplier portfolio and have actively worked to streamline these and identify rationalisation opportunities.
There are indicative signs that companies are reducing their headcounts, which serves our business model well, and we are seeing an increase in clients bringing in specialist marketing skills that are specifically designed to drive sales growth.
Giving Back
We have a commitment as an accredited Living Wage Employer and celebrated our 10th year as a Real Living Wages employer in May 2025. We are also signed up to The Scottish Business Pledge.