There seems to be no stopping Epic Group, the online training company based in Brighton's Old Steine.

Preliminary results for the year to May 2000 show the three-pronged multimedia company increased turnover by 43 per cent.

Pre-tax profits were 60 per cent ahead at £765,000 and the future looks very rosy.

This is all a far cry from three years ago when the company was on its knees after a disastrous foray into computer games.

The company had floated on the Alternative investment Market in July 1996 with very high hopes.

Originally a video company, it went into training through CDs.

Its flotation price was 105p and it raised £4.7 million. It then decided it would attack the U.S. market with its computer games Endgame and Drowned God.

Unfortunately, the distributors pulled out and the company got into financial trouble.

For the year ending May 1997, losses were £2.6 million. The share price sank to 7p at one point.

Donald Clark, who had been running the core training business, took over as CEO.

He has restructured the company into a three-branch organisation - online training, online government and online investment.

Interestingly, the area which showed the greatest rise in business is online government.

This is because Clark thinks the Blair Government is trying to arrange a shorter timeframe for local organisations to get online and Epic is exploiting this ruling to the full.

But fast-growing online government accounts for only 20 per cent of revenues.

Online training is the real growth area with 74 per cent of revenues coming from this. Clients include Royal Bank of Scotland, British Airways, BOC and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Mr Clark has said by 2005 that $11.3 billion will be spent worldwide on online learning.

Last but not least, there is online investment.

Although not contributing massively to turnover at the moment, its potential is explosive.

The company has taken investments in Cityspace, Digital Bridges and Webzone and is increasingly integrating its technology in web kiosk sites.

It has lately taken a stake in a WAP operation.

The company is a Sussex star. Its share price has gone from 17p at the beginning of 1999 to 375p recently.

With the institutional following it has developed, it could go a lot higher yet.

For the purpose of his occasional Sussex Portfolio column, Stewart Dalby has a small number of shares in Epic.