Trifast Regulatory News (TRI)

Tuesday, 19 April 2016

Trifast plc

(Trifast or, the Group or Company)

Trading Update and Notice of Annual Results

Trifast (LSE Premium Listing: Ticker: TRI), leading international specialists in the engineering, manufacturing and distribution of high quality industrial fastenings to major global assembly industries, issues the following unaudited Trading update ahead of the Group's Annual Financial Results, which will be announced on Tuesday, 14 June 2016.

Trading update

The Company is pleased to report a strong finish to the year, benefitting from the ongoing focus on driving operational efficiencies, continued organic growth and a positive contribution from acquisitions. Accordingly, the Board expects the results for the year ended 31 March 2016 to be towards the upper end of market expectations.

The key points are:

Ø Despite some slowness in the UK, the Group's markets in Asia and mainland Europe have remained strong

Ø The order pipeline is very encouraging especially within automotive and the other key sectors we serve. Sales enquiries remain brisk through our TR portal and this underpins our operational teams' confidence in the continuing growth of the business

Ø Our offering on an international scale remains an attractive USP to many OEMs and, as a result, we have successfully extended our relationship with a number of our multi-national OEM customers by serving more plants and widening the product ranges we currently supply

Ø Following the Group's major investment programme in automation in Asia, Europe and the UK last year, we are pleased to report that we are now seeing an improvement in UK productivity, whilst our operations in Italy, Malaysia and Taiwan have also benefitted from this programme and giving them the opportunity to further extend sales and marketing initiatives on a domestic and global basis

Ø Kuhlmann, our German business acquired in October 2015 has performed well and slightly ahead of management expectations. VIC in Italy once again has had a solid year and contributed strongly (on a constant currency basis) to our performance. We are encouraged by the many opportunities they have in their respective domestic and export markets

Ø The succession in CEO leadership in October was executed seamlessly and the new team structure has settled in well. We firmly believe that the operational teams and their leaders have the extensive experience and skills set to maintain and deliver our key strategic drivers while at the same time, further refining operational processes, data systems and personal accountability at senior management level

Ø The foundations of our long term strategy for business expansion stays firmly on track. As a Board, we have reviewed a number of bolt-on acquisitions although to date we have not identified any that fully meet our strict criteria. We do however continue the search for suitable opportunities and also to broaden our reach and geographies to complement the Group's existing global, product and sector footprint.

Overall, we are making good progress with our business plan and we remain optimistic about the Group's future growth prospects. The Directors look forward to discussing further at the time of the preliminary results in June.

Group website: www.trifast.com

For more information, please visit www.trfastenings.com: LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/tr-fastenings:

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