Goals Soccer Centres score

FIVE-A-SIDE football pitch operator Goals Soccer Centres recently reported strong growth in underlying profits.

The East Kilbride-based firm, which runs more than 40 centres in the UK and one in the US, also unveiled plans to embark on a new approach to construction of sites which it said offered major time and cost savings over current methods.

Managing director Keith Rogers described the shift to modular design as an “exciting and game-changing development” for the ten-year-old business, which joined the Aim market in 2004.

The firm has added ten centres to its estate in the past two years – most recently at Hull, Liverpool, Norwich and Sunderland – and increased capacity by 31 per cent as a result. It has identified a pipeline of about 40 potential sites, providing up to ten years of supply.

Shares in Goals Soccer Centres have risen sharply since the start of February but non-executive director Philip Burks, a co-founder of self-storage group Big Yellow, clearly believes the shares still represent good value.

He purchased 40,000 shares at prices around 104p each and now holds 90,000 shares.

n Roger Stephens, head of commercial at instrumentation group Spectris, has sold part of his holding following positively received results. Stephens sold 38,343 shares at 1,763.55p each.

n Matt Davies, a recently appointed director at homewares group Dunelm, has bought 4,500 shares at 499p each. n William Humphries, chief executive of Patagonia Gold, has bought more than £100,000 worth of shares in the company. Humphries purchased 300,000 shares at 35.67p each to take his total holding to 14.4 million.

Earlier in the week the company announced it had bought the remaining land surface rights of its main gold and silver project. The area, which covers 80 square kilometres in the Santa Cruz Province of Argentina, was purchased for £2.1 million.

n Two directors at property group Terrace Hill have increased their holdings. Chief executive Philip Leech bought 250,000 shares at 11.75p for his personal pension. Group finance director Jon Austen also bought 200,000 shares at 12.25p. Leech now holds 2.3 million shares and Austen 380,000 shares respectively in the company. Shares in the company have fallen by around 50 per cent in the past year.