Tribal Grp. Regulatory News (TRB)

13 May 2009 07:00



Tribal Group plc

Interim Management and AGM Statement 

Tribal Group plc ("Tribal" or the "Group"), a leading provider of consultancy, support and delivery services to the public sector in the UK and internationally, holds its Annual General Meeting at 2.00pm today and provides the following update on trading, covering the period from 1 January 2009 to date. 

Peter Martin, Tribal's Chief Executive, said:

"Trading in the first four months of the year has been in line with our expectations. We have made considerable progress in raising our levels of committed income, which now stand at over £210m (against £139m at 1 January 2009). Our sales pipeline remains healthy, both in the UK and internationally.

"We have been encouraged by the flow of new business opportunities during the period, particularly in the health, education and central government markets, although our property-related activities in regeneration and further education have continued to experience softer trading conditions. We have made good progress with our restructuring programme, from which we expect to realise annualised savings of more than £4m.

"The costs of the restructuring programme and the previously-announced investment in new business initiatives are likely to result in a second half bias to the trading performance of the business this year. The level of committed income and the strength of the sales pipeline provide the Board with confidence that the Group will perform in line with its expectations for the full year.

"We have maintained a good level of contract wins during the period. In addition to signing our new Ofsted contract, we have been successful in securing a wide range of contracts with both new and existing clients (including our appointment as lead designer on the new £150m  Edinburgh  Royal Hospital for Sick Children). We have also confirmed a number of important contract extensions. Our ability to offer clients a broad range of capabilities was rewarded recently with the award of a £1.5m contract to address the health and wellbeing needs of students and staff in every further education college and primary care trust in England.  

"We have continued to develop our international activities. Since the start of the year, we have won two new contracts, together worth over £2m, to undertake public finance reform projects in the Philippines. Our contract for the provision of benchmarking services to the Tertiary Education Commission in New Zealand has recently been renewed for a further year. We have continued to win inspections work in Abu Dhabi and we have won our first contract with the Ministry of Education in Oman.  

"Whilst we anticipate a tighter environment to prevail in certain of our UK markets, the pressures on public sector organisations to reform will increase. We therefore expect to see continuing opportunities to support our clients in achieving performance improvement, cost reductions and efficiency savings.

"Our balance sheet remains strong and, at 30 April, our net debt was less than £20m against  total  bank facilities of £46m (of which £40m are committed until June 2012)."

End 

For further information, please contact: 

Tribal Group plc Tel: 020 7323 7100

Peter Martin, Chief Executive

Simon Lawton, Group Finance Director

Maitland   Tel: 020 7379 5151

Colin Browne

Editors' note:

Tribal provides a range of consultancy, support and delivery services focused on improving the delivery of public services in the UK and internationally. Our core markets are in education, health, housing and regeneration, central government and local government. Tribal employs over 2,300 staff and its shares are quoted on the London Stock Exchange (TRB).

Links: Tribal Group plc website: www.tribalgroup.co.uk

This Statement has been prepared for and is addressed only to our shareholders as a whole and should not be relied on by any other party or for any other purpose. Tribal, its directors, employees, agents or advisers do not accept or assume responsibility to any other person to whom this Statement is shown or into whose hands it may come and any such responsibility or liability is expressly disclaimed. This Statement may contain forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement has been made by the directors in good faith based on the information available to them up to the time of approval of this Statement and should be treated with caution due to the inherent uncertainties, including both economic and business risk factors, underlying such forward-looking information. To the extent that this Statement contains any statement dealing with any time after the date of its preparation, such statement is merely predictive and speculative as it relates to events and circumstances which are yet to occur and therefore the facts stated and views expressed may change. Tribal undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements.