24th Jul 2008 07:00
24 July 2008
SYNERGY HEALTHCARE PLC
("Synergy", "the Company" or "the Group")
AGM and Interim Management Statement
Steve Wilson, Chairman of Synergy Healthcare plc (SYR.L), a leading international provider of sterilisation and infection control solutions for hospitals and the healthcare industry, will make the following statement at its Annual General Meeting today. This statement constitutes the Company's first Interim Management Statement as required by the UK Listing Authority's Disclosure and Transparency Rules. The statement covers the period since 30 March 2008.
Trading in the current year has started well and the business is performing in line with management's expectations. Sales in the first quarter were up 29.9% to £66.2 million (£50.9 million) and up 14.7% excluding the acquisition of Vernon Carus. Sales in our operating regions were as follows:
|
Sales Q108 |
Sales Q107 |
Growth |
|
|
United Kingdom |
£38.5 million |
£27.8 million |
38.7% |
|
Rest of Europe |
£25.8 million |
£21.6 million |
19.5% |
|
Asia and South Africa |
£ 1.8 million |
£ 1.5 million |
20.0% |
Strategically we are continuing to target growth outside of the United Kingdom as we seek to create a more internationalised business. We are therefore pleased to report strong growth in Europe, Asia and South Africa in part reflecting a positive impact from a number of initiatives we have taken within our Commercial Sterilisation business. We set a plan to lift growth rates in the Commercial Sterilisation business by providing additional capacity, widening our technology base and improving marketing and the impact of these initiatives is now flowing through.
As we have highlighted in the past year we are putting in place the foundations to develop the Chinese sterilisation markets as part of an objective to increase Asia's contribution to the Group. In the quarter we have continued to make good progress in the Surgical Sterilisation market with three Suzhou hospitals now fully signed up to ten-year contracts worth close to £1 million per annum in total. We remain confident that a further three hospitals will join the facility when it opens in April 2009. We have also extended our marketing activity to other cities in the Jiangsu Province and we believe there is sufficient potential to establish a further four sterilisation facilities over the coming two to three years.
The construction of our Commercial Sterilisation facility in Suzhou continues to make good progress and remains on track to open in the Spring of 2009. Last week we signed a cooperation agreement with Jiangsu Soochow University in Suzhou to promote R&D in gamma irradiation services. As part of this cooperation agreement the University will also support Synergy's graduate recruitment programme as part of our plan to build a technical and management team in China.
The debt position remains comfortably within the covenants agreed with our syndicate of banks, with net debt at £150.3M at the end of the quarter.
We look forward to reporting further progress in due course in what we expect to be another exciting year in the continued development of Synergy as a leading provider of support services to the health market.
24 July 2008
For further information:
|
Synergy Healthcare plc |
|
|
Dr Richard Steeves, Chief Executive Ivan Jacques, Finance Director |
01793 891851 |
|
Investec Patrick Robb |
020 7597 5169 |
|
Morgan Stanley Peter Moorhouse Jon Bathard-Smith |
020 7677 4056 |
|
Financial Dynamics David Yates / Ben Brewerton Emma Thompson |
020 7831 3113 |
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