4th Jan 2007 07:00
Ricardo PLC04 January 2007 4th January 2007 Ricardo plc Trading Statement Today the Board of Ricardo plc is providing a trading update in respect of thehalf year ended 31 December 2006. Ricardo will announce its Interim Results onMonday 5 March 2007. Group order book at the end of November has grown year on year by 13%, with allareas of the business contributing with growing order intake, order books andlists of opportunities. Business from Asia has been particularly strong,bringing with it an increased level of working capital as previouslyhighlighted. The UK business continues to perform well with a solid first half, a growingorder book and an increasing pipeline of prospects, particularly from Asia,where our market penetration in Japan, China and India is progressing well. Weare actively recruiting to fulfil the project demand for engine, electronics andtransmission related programmes. In addition the test beds remain well utilised. In Germany the market conditions remain challenging, however we continue to makegood progress with a growing number of long term contracts and high utilisationof labour and test beds, where we have invested in increased capability andcapacity. Germany continues to trade to plan with both improving profitabilityand order book. Moreover it is also passing on high quality business securedfrom the German market to other divisions of the Group. We continue to recruitin Germany to service the demand and strengthen the business. As highlighted previously, trading in North America was poor in the first halffollowing a period of slow order intake over the summer months. Despite theincreasing order book driven by strong order intake in the autumn, this has cometoo late to materially improve the first half year figures. We expect asignificant improvement in the second half. After an unusually high contribution last financial year from two largecontracts, Strategic Consulting has, as planned, focused on building its clientbase and order book in the first quarter. Paid utilisation was therefore low inthe first quarter but has now returned to normal levels. Overall, the 2006-7 financial year has begun satisfactorily, again showing thebenefit of being geographically and technically spread. The solid performance inthe UK and the profit recovery in Germany have provided good balance to theanticipated slow start for Strategic Consulting and the difficulties in NorthAmerica. We expect the first half performance will be broadly similar to lastyear. We continue to anticipate that the full year for 2006-7 will be a year ofsteady progress. Further enquiries: Ricardo plcDave Shemmans, Chief Executive Tel: 01273 455611Paula Bell, Finance DirectorWebsite: www.ricardo.com Gavin Anderson & CompanyFergus Wylie/Jodie Reilly Tel: 020 7554 1400 A conference call for analysts and investors will be held at 9.00am UK Time. Todial into the call, please call Tel: +44 (0)20 7189 0208. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
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