ICT GROUP Expands Philippines Operations
~ Company Opening Third Metro Manila Facility in Marikina ~
Newtown, PA, February 9, 2006 - ICT GROUP, INC. (NASDAQ: ICTG), a leading global provider of customer management and business process outsourcing solutions, today announced the expansion of its Philippines operations with the opening of a third facility in Metro Manila, in the City of Marikina, to handle the increased, strong demand for customer sales and service support from its high-quality, cost-effective offshore operations.
ICT GROUP opened its first Philippines contact center in Makati City in April 2003 and its second center in Ortigas in July 2004. Combined, these two facilities operated 1,560 workstations at year-end 2005. The Marikina facility is expected to have up to 800 workstations in operation by mid-2006 and the three centers will be supporting clients across the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia.
"We are pleased with the rapid expansion of our Philippines operations, which experienced call volume increases of over 50% in the fourth quarter of 2005 compared to the prior-year period," commented John J. Brennan, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ICT GROUP. "Clearly, the Philippines is a preferred choice among existing and prospective clients for offshore voice support, and we expect the expansion of these lower-cost, higher-margin operations to contribute significantly to the overall expansion of our margins and profitability for 2006. Complementing the strong demand for our offshore solutions, we experienced record call volumes at our U.S. contact centers in the fourth quarter of 2005."
ICT GROUP has also identified sites outside of Metro Manila to potentially open a fourth Philippines center in mid-2006. The Company now expects its Philippines operations to account for over 25% of its global production by the fourth quarter of 2006, up from 17% in the fourth quarter of 2005.
ICT GROUP, headquartered in Newtown, Pa., is a leading global provider of customer management and business process outsourcing solutions. The Company provides a comprehensive mix of customer care/retention, acquisition, up-selling/cross-selling, technical support, market research and database marketing as well as e-mail management, data entry/collections, claims processing and document management services, using its global network of onshore, near-shore and offshore operations. ICT GROUP also provides interactive voice response (IVR) and advanced speech recognition solutions as well as hosted Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technologies, available for use by clients at their own in-house facility or on a co-sourced basis in conjunction with the Company’s fully integrated contact center operations. To learn more about how ICT GROUP can help your business, click here, or call 800-201-1085.
Important Cautionary Information Regarding Forward-Looking Statements:
This press release contains certain forward-looking statements concerning demand for ICT GROUP services. The forward-looking statements involve assumptions and are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties. Whenever possible, forward-looking statements are preceded by, followed by or include the words "believes," "expects," "estimates," "anticipates" or similar expressions, which speak only as of the date the statement is made. ICT GROUP assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. For such statements, ICT GROUP claims the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The actual demand for ICT GROUP’s services may differ materially from the level disclosed in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including without limitation, a party invoking cancellation or other provisions of a contract, customer demand for a client’s product, the client’s budgets and plans and other conditions affecting the client’s industry, industry and Government regulation, general and local economic conditions and those factors discussed in ICT GROUP’s annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2004, and other documents, such as reports on Form 8-K and reports on Form 10-Q filed by ICT GROUP with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although ICT GROUP believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct and we undertake no obligation to update such expectations.
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