Carclo Regulatory News (CAR)

15 October 2015

Carclo plc

("Carclo" or "the Group")

Half year trading update

The Board is pleased to announce that Carclo has traded well ahead of the comparative period last year and in line with its expectations for the first half of the financial year. 

In Technical Plastics, profits will be ahead of last year's comparative period despite the impact of the weaker Euro on some of our businesses. Our new state of the art Chinese facility in Taicang is now complete and attracting interest from existing and potential new customers and we remain on track to integrate all local activities into the new site prior to the year end. We have continued to develop the Group's site infrastructure and are now close to finalising plans to double the size of our Bangalore, India facility in expectation of significant growth in this market. New business development throughout the division has continued to progress well and we believe this will drive growth over the coming years.

In LED Technologies, new programme wins in the first half have been in line with expectations and lighting product sales have been strong. We have also secured a flagship vehicle programme for a new major customer and we see significant potential over the next few years to develop this relationship. Whilst this progress is encouraging, one of our other major Group customers, the VW Group ("VW"), this week announced that its flagship luxury vehicle which was due for launch in 2017 will now be launched as an all-electric vehicle. While the full ramifications of this decision on the lighting design are not yet confirmed, we anticipate that this announcement will impact the expected launch date of this vehicle and therefore the timing of anticipated related revenues for our Wipac business.

As previously highlighted the Precision Engineering division will report operating profits a little behind last year's comparative period due to weakness in the spares segment order book. There are some signs of a strengthening of our order book in this division as we enter the second half.

Carclo Diagnostic Solutions has continued to meet its development timelines. During the period we have been able to generate excellent technical data on the performance of our Micropoc platform and this will be shown to potential collaborators at forthcoming medical conferences. We have now commissioned a healthcare practitioner review of the Micropoc platforms and intended applications as part of the Board's strategy to continually evaluate the strength of the opportunity given our continued investment in this area.

The financial position of the Group remains strong. Group debt has increased at the half year, as anticipated following the investment in China, but is expected to decrease from this level by the end of the financial year.

The Board anticipates that the likely impact of the announcement from VW will mean the Group's full year performance will be marginally below its previous expectations.

Carclo plc will announce its interim results for the period to 30 September 2015 on 17 November 2015.

- ENDS -

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Note to Editors

Carclo plc is a public company whose shares are quoted on the London Stock Exchange.

Carclo's strategy is to develop and expand its key manufacturing assets where there remain significant further opportunities to drive value. To enhance profit margins and support customers the group has been investing in lower cost regions and new technologies.

Approximately three fifths of revenues are derived from the supply of fine tolerance, injection moulded plastic components, mainly for medical products. The balance of revenue is derived mainly from the design and supply of specialised injection moulded LED based lighting systems to the low volume premium automotive industry.