Johnson Service picks up Jarvis contracts

Not much has changed since laundry and textile rental group Johnson Service Group released its full year results in March, with the company continuing to trade in line with expectations.The company has, however, been active on the acquisitions front and announced the completion of three private finance initiative (PFI) contracts, plus two related special purpose companies (SPCs) from the administrators of Jarvis.The three PFI contracts generated revenue of £4m in the year to March 2010. Each contract is set to run for more than 15 years.The group has also reached agreement with Jarvis to manage, under licence, a further five facilities management contracts, together with the related SPCs, pending acquisition.These five contracts generated revenue of £6.5m in the year to March 2010.The aggregate consideration for all of the eight contracts and seven related SPCs is expected to be £3.0m in cash on completion and will be financed from existing bank facilities, of which £1.2m plus costs has been incurred to date.The company said it expects revenue and adjusted operating profit in its Facilities Management division in the first half of 2010 will be in line with the first half of last year.In Dry Cleaning, where the company got off to a bad start to the year as a result of poor weather in January, like for like (LFL) sales are expected to be down 5% on the first half of 2009, although during the last 12 weeks the LFL sales decrease has fallen to 1.4% which is about the sort of performance the group is expecting from the division in the second half.The Textile Rental division has performed well in difficult markets and is expected to show a further improved adjusted operating profit performance despite market pressures on revenue.Net debt at the end of June is expected to be about £65m, down slightly from £67.7m at the end of 2009, helped by a tax rebate of £2m. Johnson Service