ATK.L Regulatory News (ATK)

Pre-close trading update

WS Atkins plc ("Atkins" or the "Group"), the design, engineering and project management consultancy, today provides an update on trading in advance of its half-year results for the six months ending 30 September 2014, which will be announced on 13 November 2014.

The Group's overall first half performance is expected to be in line with expectations, despite currency headwinds in the period.

In our UK and Europe business we have experienced a mixed first half, against a strong prior year comparator. As noted previously, while we have seen high volumes of work in our rail business, our financial performance continues to be impacted by a number of outstanding variation negotiations. We have also responded to utilisation issues in our aerospace and water and environmental businesses by making staff reductions and redeploying staff in both businesses during the first half. Elsewhere, however, there is good ongoing demand for our services as the Government continues to implement its strategy of investment to meet the infrastructure needs of the UK economy.

In line with our portfolio optimisation strategy, we reached agreement during the period to sell our Polish business to Multiconsult AS, a Norwegian multidisciplinary consultancy and design business, for a cash consideration of £2.8m.

In North America we completed our restructuring activities with the introduction of a new technical professional organisation at the beginning of the year. While the implementation of this new operating model, combined with our continued focus on overhead reductions, is expected to deliver a margin improvement for the year as a whole, limited benefit is expected in the first half results.

Our Middle East business has had a strong first half as we have progressed with the mobilisation and design delivery on a number of metro projects. This is expected to contribute to a significant year on year performance improvement for the region.

Our Asia Pacific business is trading in line with expectations as it has continued to implement its geographic and sector diversification strategy.

We were pleased to complete the acquisition of Nuclear Safety Associates, Inc earlier this month, in another step towards our strategy to be one of the world's leading Energy consultants. In addition, organic growth in our existing business continues to be supported by significant market opportunities.

During the period we incurred around £4.5m of external fees in relation to the unsuccessful pursuit of a significant acquisition opportunity. These will be treated as an exceptional cost in the six months ending 30 September 2014.

The Group's financial position remains strong, supported by our continued focus on cash generation across the business.

Outlook

Overall, the outlook for the Group for the year remains unchanged and in line with expectations, despite currency headwinds in the period to date.

Ends

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Notes to editors

1. Atkins

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).

2. Cautionary Statement

This announcement has been prepared for the shareholders of Atkins as a whole and its sole purpose and use is to assist shareholders to exercise their governance rights. In particular, this announcement has not been audited or otherwise independently verified and no warranty is given as to its accuracy or completeness (other than any such warranty which is mandatorily implied by statute). Atkins and its directors and employees are not responsible for any other purpose or use or to any other person in relation to this announcement and their responsibility to shareholders shall be limited to that which is imposed by statute.

This announcement contains indications of likely future developments and other forward looking statements that are subject to risk factors associated with, among other things, the economic and business circumstances occurring from time to time in the countries, sectors and business segments in which the Group operates. These and other factors could adversely affect the Group's results, strategy and prospects. Forward looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. They relate to events and/or depend on circumstances in the future which could cause actual results and outcomes to differ materially from those currently expected. No obligation is assumed to update any forward looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.