Trifast Regulatory News (TRI)

Trifast plc

(Trifast, Group or TR)

"Holding the world together"

"Trifast is a global business serving a broad and balanced range of sectors and geographies and generating c.70% of revenues and profits outside of the UK. We are a full-service provider to our multinational customers, delivering reliable product engineering, quality and supply, via flexible global logistics solutions. It is these core skills that continue to allow us to increase market share across a wide customer base and put us in a good position to keep moving forward and delivering on our future aspirations even in a less certain world."

Trading Update

London, Thursday, 14 February 2019: Trifast plc (Main market LSE Symbol: TRI) issues the following unaudited Trading Update covering the period from the half year to the date of this announcement.

TRADING

Despite the macroeconomic backdrop impacting the outlook for industry as a whole, we are pleased to announce that the Group continues to trade in line with our expectations. Furthermore, recent contract wins, and a strong pipeline gives us confidence as we look to the future.

Globally, the automotive sector continues to present Trifast with significant opportunities for organic growth through a mix of cross-selling, new technologies as a result of the ongoing evolution to electric vehicles and the collaboration of both local and international TR capabilities. As expected, the weaknesses we previously highlighted in the UK automotive markets have remained, temporarily impacting revenues and profitability at a regional level. However, outside of the UK, we are continuing to build our market share with both existing and new key global Tier1 and OEM customers.

Across the wider Group, the sector and regional trends experienced in the first half have largely continued through the period.

It is also pleasing to report that PTS, which we acquired at the start of the financial year, has settled in well to the Group and is delivering strong year-on-year growth, while our TR Technical and Innovation Centres are adding value to our global customer partnerships. Project Atlas, our Group-wide investment programme to build the Trifast of tomorrow remains firmly on track and on budget, and we look forward to providing more detail on our progress at the full year.

BREXIT

Our cross-functional Brexit team which has been in place for the last two years has completed its contingency planning. We currently consider that both the operational and financial impact of any Brexit scenario will be manageable in the short term. Longer term implications for the wider UK economy are less easy to predict.

BANKING

We continue to operate well within our current facilities. As we indicated in the HY report, in order to support our future global growth aspirations, acquisition strategy and substantial investment programme over the next 3-5 years, we have initiated discussions with several banks in order to secure access to additional facilities and thereby maintain an appropriate degree of funding flexibility. This process is progressing very well, and we expect to be able to give more details shortly.

SUMMARY

Notwithstanding the fact that, macroeconomic factors, including currency volatility, the potential implications of Brexit and the performance of the world economy generally, will continue to influence market behaviour in the coming months; the Board is confident in its strategy and the Group's flexibility to adapt to change, and remains optimistic for the future.

A further update will be released in mid-April, ahead of the full year results which are scheduled to be announced in June.

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014. Upon the publication of this announcement via the Regulatory Information Service, this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain.