Spring Group has announced it had started to recruit more consultants and would be broadening its business mix.

The company, primarily an IT recruiter, said it had successfully implemented its plan to return to profit, exiting a number of loss-making contracts and significantly reducing its operating costs. It said results for 2006 would beat analysts' expectations, with profit before tax expected to be in excess of £5m, compared with a loss of £5.5m in 2005. It has a cash balance of around £45m. When Spring reports its final results on 7 March, it will unveil the results of a strategic review Peter Searle has been working on since he took over as chief executive in October.