RNS Number : 0857Y
Balfour Beatty PLC
02 July 2008
2 July 2008
BALFOUR BEATTY PLC
HALF-YEAR TRADING UPDATE
Balfour Beatty plc, the international engineering, construction, services and investment
group, is providing this trading update for the
half-year ended 30 June 2008 in advance of its interim results announcement on 13 August 2008.
TRADING
Further to our Interim Management Statement of 15 May 2008, trading in the year to date
continues to be strong. A number of major new
orders, referred to in our May statement, have been secured across our business sectors and
geographical markets. Since that time we have
also secured the $330 million 281 North Toll Project in San Antonia, Texas. At the end of
May, our confirmed order book had increased since
the end of 2007 by £400 million to £11.8 billion. This excludes the impact of consolidating
the order books of our 2008 acquisitions.
Our overall future work pipeline has also grown substantially with, for example, our
appointment as preferred bidder for the M25 PPP
widening and maintenance project.
SECTOR PERFORMANCE
Sector performance, outlined below, is in line with that reported on 15 May 2008.
Good progress in the Building sector is continuing, with particularly strong performances
in Balfour Beatty Construction in the US and
the UK, Mansell and Haden Building Management, which secured a substantial extension to its
facilities management contract for BT during the
period.
Very good progress has also continued in Engineering, with particularly strong performance
in the existing UK regional civil engineering
network, now augmented by Dean & Dyball, and in Dubai, where we anticipate the revenues of our
joint venture to be approximately £0.7
billion in 2008.
Progress in Rail is also good as market prospects continue to improve, although the period
has not benefited from one-off settlements of
historic projects as was the case in the first months of last year.
In the Investments sector, we continue to make substantial commitments in new PPP
projects, in addition to developing our infrastructure
asset business and our PPP bidding capability outside the UK. Our existing concessions
continue to perform at anticipated levels.
ACQUISITIONS AND INVESTMENTS
Further steps have been taken to increase the Group's earning power since our 15th May
statement, in which we referred to the
acquisition of GMH Military Housing (now Balfour Beatty Communities), the US PPP and
facilities management specialist; Dean and Dyball, a
leading UK regional contractor and Blackpool International Airport.
On 15th May 43,320,411 new ordinary shares in the Company were placed with institutional
investors, realising gross proceeds of £186
million. This equity was raised to deliver incremental
growth through additional bolt-on acquisitions and organic growth opportunities in our key
strategic investment areas, following
substantial expenditure on acquisitions since January 2007.
Since the placing, Balfour Beatty has completed the acquisition of Barnhart, a leading
Californian construction management company for
$116 million, which enhances the Group's already strong position in the US education market
and in California. We have also agreed to
acquire Schreck-Mieves, the German rail engineering group, for EUR36 million, which gives the
Group a strong position in the German
trackwork market and enhances its ability to deliver major multi-disciplinary rail projects in
Germany.
OUTLOOK
We anticipate that order intake and trading performance will remain strong throughout the
year and that we will make good progress in
2008.
ENDS
Enquiries to: Tim Sharp
Tel: +44 (0)20 7216 6884
www.balfourbeatty.com
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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