Tribal Grp. Regulatory News (TRB)

16 January 2014

Tribal Group plc

Trading Update

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 in advance of the preliminary announcement of its results for the year ended 31 December 2013, which will be released on 14 March 2014.

Overview

The trading performance of the Group was strong in the final quarter of the year and, as a result, the Board now anticipates that adjusted profit before tax and earnings per share for the year ended 31 December 2013 will be better than previous expectations.

Our Systems business continued to make good progress. Our major education management system projects in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada are on track, and we generated a healthy level of new opportunities both in the UK and internationally, particularly in the Higher Education market.

Our Solutions business performed as anticipated. We are progressing well with our recently announced programmes in the US and Middle East. Our quality assurance work in the UK remains on track, and our performance improvement activities had a strong end to the year with good levels of renewals and new customer wins.

Financial position

Tribal has continued to generate good operating cash flow and, combined with the benefit of focussed working capital management, net debt at the end of December 2013 was £4.6m (1 January 2013: £9.9m).

Outlook

Tribal's order book at 31 December 2013 remains resilient at £129m (31 December 2012: £168m), with the year on year movement primarily reflecting the maturity of our Ofsted inspection contracts. Technology is becoming increasingly pervasive throughout our work; this focus is increasingly reflected in the shape of our order book, which continues to provide good underpinning to our revenue expectations for 2014 and beyond.

We are seeing strong demand in international markets for our education management systems, and we are also seeing increasing opportunities in these markets for our quality assurance and performance improvement solutions.

We are continuing to invest in our capabilities in international markets. Our sales and business development capabilities are now increasingly well established in North America and the Middle East, complementing our existing teams in Asia Pacific and the UK, and we are continuing to grow our international delivery capacity.

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.