Tribal Grp. Regulatory News (TRB)

17 May 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 1 January 2013 to 16 May 2013.

Overview

Trading since our year end has been in line with our expectations for 2013. As anticipated at the start of the year, our profits are likely to be weighted towards the second half of the year. Our order book remains strong, and at the end of April was £158 million, compared to £168m at the end of 31 December 2012.

Our Systems business continues to make good progress. Domestically, our overall pipeline for new business remains resilient. Internationally, our pipeline reflects an increasingly geographic spread of potential new customers for our student management systems, consistent with our strategic plan.

Our Solutions business has performed satisfactorily. Whilst domestically the market remains relatively quiet, our software-based education improvement services are gaining momentum in Asia Pacific, and are beginning to make progress in the United States and Middle East.

Cash generation from our operations has been good, and our net debt levels remain in line with our expectations for the full year.

Higher Education

Although we are seeing the effects of budget constraints on our UK university customers' capacity to purchase enhancements to our SITS student management system, the flow of new opportunities in our student management systems business in our existing markets is good. In addition to previously announced key new customers secured towards the end of 2012, we have recently been appointed as preferred bidder on two further systems projects for important universities in Asia Pacific.

Elsewhere, our geographic expansion is proceeding well. As identified in our preliminary results announcement in March 2013, we have been exploring North America and the Middle East as potential new markets for our university student management system. We are now in advanced discussions with two important universities in North America, together with a higher education institution in the Middle East, to deploy our SITS system. Further details will be provided in due course.

The integration of i-graduate, which we acquired in January 2013, with our operational benchmarking activities is proceeding well and we are pleased with the early benefits of collaboration across our combined businesses.

Vocational Learning

Overall activity levels in the UK Vocational Learning market are steady. During 2012, we launched our refreshed Maytas 5 work-based learning student management system, and we are pleased with good upgrade demand from our installed customer base in the early part of 2013.

Our work in Asia Pacific is continuing to make good headway. We have successfully met key milestones for delivery of our systems into acceptance testing on the New South Wales Student Administration and Learning Management (SALM) project, prior to anticipated initial implementation in colleges later this year. Also in Australia, we have secured a further analytics contract in Technical and Further Education Colleges (TAFEs) in the state of Queensland, under which we will provide financial and operational benchmarking services to a group of TAFEs. This second such contract represents important progress for our Solutions activities in Australia, as we broaden our capabilities in the Asia Pacific region.

Schools

Our schools and Early Years quality review and evaluation work continues to progress well, with positive trends in overall inspection volumes. Our quality review programmes in the United States and the Middle East are also extending, and we are seeing good opportunities for our analytics and benchmarking solutions in these markets.

As with our colleges solution, we have successfully met key milestones for delivery of our schools-focused student management system for the SALM project. Our software has moved into acceptance testing, prior to anticipated implementation in an initial selection of schools across New South Wales later in the year. We are also making good progress on our contract with the New Zealand Ministry of Education to provide our k2 asset management system across all state schools in New Zealand.

Activity levels in the domestic Children's Services market remain good. In addition to our existing local authority management systems, we are now exploring a number of opportunities in the UK to complement our Children's Services management system (Synergy) with schools-based student management system functionality derived from our work in Australia.

Keith Evans, Chief Executive, commented "Trading in the early months has been as expected, with good progress in particular across our international operations. We look forward to the balance of the year with confidence."

Capital markets event

In advance of our half year results, which will be announced on 13 August 2013, Tribal will be holding a capital markets event in London on 5 June 2013. Further details will be published on the investors' page of our website nearer the time.

End

Editors' note:

About Tribal

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.