Rainbow Rare Earths Phalaborwa project shaping up to be one of the lowest cost producers globally. Watch the video here.
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Interim Management Statement The AGM of Pendragon PLC will be held at 11.30am today. The Chairman will report at the AGM the following Interim Management Statement by Pendragon PLC covering the period from 1 January 2012 to 9 May 2012. Unless otherwise stated, figures quoted in this statement are for the three months ended 31 March 2012. Summary The Group is making good progress in quarter one and is in line with expectations. The Group continues to significantly outperform in the Used car sector with double digit growth in the first quarter and is further benefiting from a lower interest charge in 2012 due to its lower debt profile. Trading Update Aftersales is our principal area of profitability in the Group. In the first quarter of 2012, like for like service retail sales were maintained at last year's level. Service retail sales is the core area of activity within aftersales and this result is encouraging given that the market opportunity in this area has decreased as a result of the reducing nearly new vehicle car parc. The Group continues to implement and enhance its Vehicle Health Check programme which is driving this performance. Like for like gross profit margin for aftersales improved again, by 70 basis points versus quarter one in 2011. The Group's key area of growth continues to be in the Used car sector and we are delighted to report double digit growth for the first quarter. Our like for like used volume growth of 11.4% continued to significantly outperform the national market volumes. During the quarter used retail margin has been improving steadily since the start of the year. Whilst used retail margin declined on a like for like basis by 90 basis points, this was against a strong comparator in the first quarter of 2011. However due to the significant improvement in volume, like for like used retail gross profit again increased by a further 1.8%. The key contributors to this performance are the on-going investment in our used car initiatives and our Stratstone.com and Evanshalshaw.com website growth. Visits to our websites are up by 24% in the first quarter of 2012. The new car sector is an important component of the Group's activities. We continue to work together with our manufacturing partners to achieve the sales and customer goals that we both strive to achieve. UK new car market registrations in quarter one were up by 0.9% whereas our performance was up 15.7% on a like for like basis. For the brands we represent within Stratstone, national retail registrations increased by 7.2% in the quarter, whereas our new retail sales increased by 13.8%. The Group has particularly benefited from new product activity from Range Rover Evoque, BMW 1-series and BMW 3-series. For the brands we represent within Evans Halshaw, national retail registrations increased 5.9% in the quarter whereas our new retail sales increased by 3.1%. We are pleased to report that new margin has been maintained in the per