Trifast Regulatory News (TRI)

Trifast plc

(Trifast, Group or TR)

"Holding the world together"

Leading international specialists in the design, engineering, manufacturing and distribution

of high quality industrial and Category 'C' fastenings principally to major global assembly industries

Trading Update

London, Monday, 21 October 2019: Trifast plc (Main market LSE Symbol: TRI) issues the following unaudited Trading Update ahead of the Group's Half-year results for the six months ended 30 September 2019 and which are scheduled to be announced on Tuesday 19 November 2019.

TRADING

The challenging market environment highlighted in our Annual General Meeting update on 24 July 2019 has continued into Q2 of FY2020, with end markets across a number of sectors remaining weak, particularly in the automotive sector. This has led to some reduced volumes to existing builds across the UK, Europe and Asia. As well as lead times on production schedules moving out on a number of new business wins.

The impact of this weakness has reduced revenue levels with a corresponding reduction in gross and operating margins against a semi-fixed cost base. As a result, following a review of our year-to-date results and an update to our forecasts for HY2, the Board has concluded that in the absence of further market deterioration, the Group's underlying profit before tax in FY2020 is expected to be approximately £22m.

Notwithstanding the current high levels of uncertainty, we are pleased to report that our pipeline of new wins remains reassuringly solid and activity levels around the Group continue to be encouraging across all sectors. Both our USA region and our latest UK acquisition, PTS, have continued to perform exceptionally well in the first half of the year, comfortably delivering double digit revenue growth.

As ever, the search for the next acquisition remains an important objective for us. In fact, in a less certain world we are starting to see the number of potential M&A opportunities increase. And with new £80m Group banking facilities secured, we are very well placed to take advantage of this. Supporting our growth ambition, we have been working closely with external advisors in key geographies to help build the pipeline that will drive our ongoing M&A aspirations.

Project Atlas, our Group-wide investment programme to build the Trifast of tomorrow remains on time and on budget, and we expect to get our first pilot site live on the new system by the end of this financial year.

BREXIT

Our cross-functional Brexit team which has been in place for the last three 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. Although longer term implications for the wider UK economy are less easy to predict.

SUMMARY

Despite the short-term end market weaknesses and macroeconomic uncertainty, the strong long-term fundamentals of our business model and strategy remain unchanged.

Trifast is a global business serving a broad and balanced range of sectors and geographies, generating c.70% of revenues and profits outside of the UK and with no one customer representing greater than 7% of revenue. We are a full service provider to our multinational customers, delivering reliable product engineering, quality and supply, via flexible global logistics solutions. In the long term, it is these core skills that will 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.

With the long-term fundamentals of the business intact, the Board remains committed to its ongoing investment driven growth strategy and is optimistic for the long-term future.

The Directors look forward to providing the next update at the time of the Group's Half-year results in November 2019.