24th Sep 2015 09:48
LONDON (Alliance News) - WYG PLC on Thursday said that it has delivered a very strong performance in its UK business in the first half of its financial year, and expects pretax profit to be in line with recent market guidance for the full year.
The global programme and project management and technical consultancy said that trading in its UK business was underpinned by continuing economic growth and infrastructure spending, which are the main drivers of its core front-end planning and consultancy business.
Its UK order book is up 15% on the figure it reported at March 31, which the company said is growing at a faster rate.
"The relatively short-term nature of a large proportion of our UK order book means that work translates into revenue more quickly than in other regions, which gives us good near-term visibility," Chairman Mike McTighe said in a statement.
Meanwhile, a large proportion of its EU-related pipeline has converted into firm project wins following a delay in the ramp up in the EU funding cycle, WYG said. International businesses have therefore delivered a 20% increase in order intake on the figure reported at March 31.
"A meaningful proportion of these wins represent multi-year projects that will drive performance as we go into the second half of the year and for several years beyond," McTighe said.
WYG said that as a consequence of the delayed ramp up in EU funding, both revenue and adjusted pretax profit in the first half will be broadly unchanged from the first half of the prior year, but the "exceptionally high" order coverage will result in strong growth in the second half so that the full-year outcome will be in line with expectations.
"We continue to review a pipeline of acquisition opportunities and we expect some of these to progress, although the timing is hard to predict. Earlier in the year we put in place a new GBP25 million five-year committed facility with HSBC; the flexibility that this facility has given will enable the group to pursue such acquisitions and support growth in its core activities," McTighe concluded.
WYG's annual general meeting took place starting at 1000 BST on Thursday.
Shares in WYG were untraded on Wednesday, last trading at 118.90 pence.
By Karolina Kaminska; [email protected] @KarolinaAllNews
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