Tribal Grp. Regulatory News (TRB)

15 November 2013

Tribal Group plc

Interim Management Statement

Tribal Group plc ("Tribal"), a leading provider of systems and solutions to the education, learning and training markets in the UK and internationally, provides the following update on trading, covering the period from 30 June 2013.

Overview

Current trading is in line with our expectations for the full year.

Our Systems business continues to make good progress, and is seeing a healthy level of new opportunities both in the UK and internationally. Our Solutions business is performing as anticipated, with continued encouraging opportunities in international markets offsetting a quieter domestic procurement environment.

Our order book at 31 October remains strong at £137m (30 June 2013: £145m), and we continue to generate good cashflow. Our expectations for net debt at the year end remain unchanged. 

Higher Education

Our activities in Higher Education continue to show good momentum. Whilst we continue to experience slower decision-making amongst our customers, we are seeing good interest in our student management systems and benchmarking solutions in our domestic and international markets. 

Since the half year, Bournemouth University has purchased our SITS system, and Imperial College, London (which is ranked amongst the top ten universities in the world by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2013-2014) has selected Tribal as its preferred supplier to replace its existing student management system.

Internationally, our relationship with the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada is developing well. We have entered into a framework arrangement with UBC and, since the half year, UBC has continued to draw down new components of this framework agreement. As we build our systems implementation capacity in North America, we are also pleased to have established a collaboration with AACRAO Consulting, the advisory arm of AACRAO (American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers). AACRAO Consulting provides services to campus management teams in universities and colleges across the US and Canada. 

Elsewhere, our pipeline includes well advanced discussions to supply our systems to a number of important universities in the southern hemisphere, of which further details will be provided when appropriate.

The internationalisation of our performance improvement solutions is developing well. In the Middle East, we have reached agreement with the Bahraini workforce development agency to deliver a university education improvement programme under a c£2m contract. In North America, we are partnering with University of California, Berkeley to use our analytics tools to deliver its Student Experience in Research Universities - International (SERU-I) programme. 

Vocational Learning

Alongside our university education project in Bahrain, we have also reached agreement to deliver a vocational education improvement programme focused on Bahrain's Education and Training Institutes, under a c£3m contract.

In Australia, we are pleased with continuing progress on the New South Wales Student Administration and Learning Management (SALM) programme. This programme covers all state-run schools and Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges across New South Wales. Our development programme remains on track, and live deployment of the TAFE elements of our solution is scheduled for Q1 2014.

Our activity levels in the UK vocational learning market continue to be steady, although purchasing cycles remain slow due to budget constraints in the further education market. Since the half year, Rhondda Cynon Taff Council and Devon County Council have joined our EBS4 FE college system customer base, following on from Luton College and Neath Port Talbot College in the first half of the year, and our new Maytas 5 work-based learning student management system has continued to roll out well to our installed customer base. 85% of our Maytas customers have now upgraded to the new version.

Schools

Our work in schools and children's services in the UK is in line with our overall expectations.

Tribal's quality review contracts for Ofsted are continuing well, and we are now active on a USD4m programme of school quality reviews for the New York State Education Department, building on work we have previously undertaken in New York City and other similar projects in the US and Middle East. We have also undertaken pilot quality review programmes on teacher training colleges in New Mexico and Texas on behalf of the National Council on Teacher Quality, and we are looking to extend this work elsewhere in the US during 2014.

Within the SALM programme, our schools-focussed system is being deployed in a staged roll-out in line with key contract milestones. The children's well-being elements of our system are now live in over 200 New South Wales schools, and the remaining functional elements of the schools system are expected to go live in this initial cohort of schools in the latter part of this month.

Keith Evans, Chief Executive, commented "We are pleased with our progress so far this year, and we remain confident of the medium and long term growth prospects for Tribal, which are underpinned by the continued growth and internationalisation of our customer base."

End

Editors' note:

Tribal supports the delivery of education, learning and training services around the world. We build world-leading software, support adult learning, careers and professional development and provide school inspections and improvement services both in the UK and internationally.

We work in partnership with a wide range of organisations, including schools, colleges and universities, prisons and social services, government agencies and large and small employers.

Tribal has around 1,400 staff and our work spans five continents across the world. More information about Tribal is available online at www.tribalgroup.com. 

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 and the financial information is unaudited. 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.