ATK.L Regulatory News (ATK)

Atkins trading in line with expectations

WS Atkins plc ("Atkins" or the "Group"), the design, engineering and project management consultancy, today provides its Interim Management Statement for the period from 1 April 2014 to date.

Overall the Group has traded in line with expectations during the period, despite currency headwinds.

Group performance

United Kingdom and Europe

This first period of trading has seen a continuation of the trends experienced as we closed out the last financial year and as noted at the time of our year end results announcement in June. Our highways consultancy business is operating in a buoyant market, where we are well positioned. While our rail business is also experiencing high volumes of work, our financial performance continues to be adversely impacted by an increasing number of variation negotiations. Elsewhere we have taken action to mitigate the reduced workload in our aerospace business, achieving a good level of redeployment of resources to other parts of the Group and we have also now completed the right-sizing of our water and environment business.

North America

At the start of this new financial year we transitioned to deliver work through our new technical professional organisation (TPO) and we are seeing utilisation improve as a result of this significant structural change to the business. As part of our operational excellence programme we have also been focusing on reducing overheads and the impact of this, together with the benefits of the TPO, is expected to deliver improvements in the North American operating margin this year.

Middle East

The Middle East has enjoyed a strong start to the new financial year as we continue to deliver work on a number ofsignificant metro projects and benefit from increased activity in the property market.

We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded the role of lead designer for the Doha Metro Gold Line in Qatar. Atkins has been appointed by the consortium of contractors which is delivering the Gold Line on behalf of Qatar Railways Company, comprising Greek contractor Aktor, Yapi Merkezi and STFA from Turkey, India's Larsen & Toubro and the local Qatari company Al Jaber Engineering. The total capital cost of the project is more than £2.5bn and our design role is worth around £80m to the Group over the next couple of years.

Asia Pacific

Our Asia Pacific business has traded well in the period. Our increasingly diversified Hong Kong and mainland China businesses provide us with a strong foundation from which to explore growth in the wider South East Asia region.

Energy

We have made a good start to the year in our Energy business across our oil and gas, nuclear and power and renewable businesses. We were pleased to be appointed as preferred bidder on the Silos Direct Encapsulation Plant (SDP) decommissioning project at Sellafield, on which we expect to mobilise resources in the latter part of this financial year.

We are still awaiting regulatory approval for the acquisition of Nuclear Safety Associates, which will augment our skill base with 130 people in nuclear safety and professional security services in the North American market. We expect to reach completion of the transaction by the end of the summer.

Balance sheet

The Group's financial position remains strong, with net funds at the end of June of around £165m. The position at 30 September 2014 is expected to reflect the normal first half seasonal working capital outflow.

Outlook

Overall, the Group is trading in line with expectations and, despite ongoing currency headwinds, the outlook for the full year remains unchanged.

Ends

Enquiries

Notes to editors:

Atkins (www.atkinsglobal.com) is one of the world's leading design, engineering and project management consultancies*, employing some 17,500 people across the UK, North America, Middle East, Asia Pacific and Europe. Our people's breadth and depth of expertise and drive to ask why has allowed us to plan, design and enable some of the world's most complex and time critical projects.

*15th largest global design firm (Engineering News-Record 2014) and the third largest multidisciplinary consultancy in Europe (Svensk Teknik och Design 2013).

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