Interim Management Statement
6 May 2009
THE CAPITA GROUP PLC - INTERIM MANAGEMENT STATEMENT
The Capita Group Plc ("Capita"), the UK's leading business process outsourcing
("BPO") and professional services company, is today issuing its interim
management statement covering the 4 months to 30 April 2009. This statement
coincides with its Annual General Meeting which is taking place today.
Performance summary for the period from 1 January 2009 to date:
Capita has performed well in the first 4 months of 2009. All our key financial
metrics remain on track with continued strong cash generation, contained
capital expenditure and an efficient capital structure, with relatively low
gearing.
Our clients are highly selective and, increasingly, they seek outsourcing
partners who have not just the expertise and capacity to support them but also
the financial strength and stability essential to sustaining a long term
partnership.
Businesses across the Group are trading well and the market for significant
outsourcing opportunities remains buoyant. Some of our businesses serving the
financial services sector, particularly our unit and investment trust
administration and parts of our registrar businesses are inevitably being
affected by the current weakness and restructuring in this sector. However, the
pressures across this sector are also resulting in some interesting
opportunities for Capita.
We remain confident that the areas across the Group that are potentially
affected by the current volatile economic climate represent less than 10% of
our Group revenues and this risk has been factored into our business plans for
2009.
Generating growth organically and through acquisitions
We continue to drive forward the profitable growth of the Group both
organically and through small to medium sized acquisitions.
In the period to date, we have secured major contracts and renewals to deliver
outsourced services worth a total of £767m. This includes:
* AXA Sun Life - preferred partner to administer approximately 3.2 million
life and pensions policies. The deal, which is subject to final agreement
of commercial terms, is worth £500m over 15 years. The service is expected
to start in June 2009.
* Learning and Skills Council (LSC) - to manage the administration of a range
of allowances to support learners, including the Education Maintenance
Allowance (EMA) and the Adult Learning Grant (ALG). The contract, worth £
68m over 4 years until 2013, with an option to extend for a further 2
years, follows on from our announcement in November 2008 that Capita were
to take over the service with immediate effect, after the ending of the
LSC's contract with its previous provider.
* Office for National Statistics - to recruit and train all the temporary ONS
workers who will work as field staff for the 2011 Census of Population and
Housing in England and Wales, and to administer their pay. The contract
will be worth around £25m over 2 and a half years.
* Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) - the contract for the
management of the National Strategies, has been extended by 1 year from the
end of March 2010, when the current 5 year contract is due to end, to 31
March 2011. The Department has indicated that the minimum value of the 1
year contract extension will be £64m.
In addition we have successfully won contracts and renewals with Breckland
District Council, Charnwood Borough Council, eircom and Threadneedle.
We announce the size of our bid pipeline twice a year at our half and full-year
results. This is a snapshot of bids, worth £10m or above, where we have been
shortlisted to the last 4 or fewer. Our bid pipeline stood at £3.1bn on 26
February 2009. Opportunities in the bid pipeline are progressing to expected
timelines and we have a strong set of further opportunities sitting just
outside of the pipeline. Our most active markets remain life and pensions,
local government and central government. We face no material rebids (greater
than 1% of previous year's revenue) until 2011.
Acquisitions continue to form an important part of our growth strategy. To date
in 2009, we have acquired 4 businesses for a total consideration of £30.6m:
* FMS - a trust administration business, acquired for an initial
consideration of £2m, which provides finance and corporate trust services
to institutions, multinationals and private individuals.
* CHKS and NHS Membership Services - 2 acquisitions: CHKS Limited, a
healthcare intelligence and quality improvement services business, and NHS
Membership Services, which provides membership services and engagement
programmes for over 50 NHS foundation trusts, add further strength to our
position in the health market. The 2 businesses were acquired for an
aggregate consideration of £13.6m.
* Hero Insurance Services - a personal lines broker primarily offering
insurance for cars and motorbikes, acquired in March for approximately £
15m.
There is a good volume of potential acquisitions priced at attractive levels
and we expect to acquire further businesses this year that take us into
complementary areas and add expertise and value to the Group.
Operational delivery and performance
Our excellent track record of operational delivery continues to generate strong
client references which support our ability to win further business from new
clients.
The first 4 months has seen the smooth transition of several of our recently
won contracts. This includes our 10 year contract with the Health and Safety
Executive (HSE), worth £14m per year, to administer a new gas registration
scheme in Great Britain. The new scheme, Gas Safe Register, launched on 1 April
and so far more than 115,000 gas engineers have registered.
Our partnership with Sheffield City Council, a contract worth over £200m over 7
years, has also started well as we help them to improve services and drive
business transformation for the benefit of everyone in the City. This contract
win further strengthens our leading position in the local government market.
Our Life & Pensions operations this year will be responsible for administering
25 million policies in total, approximately 22% of all UK life and pensions
policies. The scale of these operations positions us strongly in the market and
allows us to create and derive benefits from economies of scale. We remain
focused on achieving smooth transfers of recently won business and on achieving
operational synergies across our extensive IT infrastructure, customer service
operations and through offshoring. Alongside this the life and pensions market
presents a strong pipeline of potential bid opportunities.
In the recent budget, the Government announced that it is seeking £15bn of
efficiency savings across public services. £6bn of savings is being worked
towards in the current spending review period and an additional £9bn will be
sought between 2011 and 2013/14. The Government's Operational Efficiency
Programme (OEP) has identified that £13.3bn of these savings can be achieved in
back office operations, IT and collaborative procurement, with the remainder in
asset management and sales, property and local incentives and empowerment. With
our strong track record in service transformation and delivery and our
expertise in the public sector, we believe we are well positioned to assist
government departments as they seek to implement change, re-engineer services
and achieve efficiency savings.
Outlook
Capita remains well placed to continue its growth in 2009. Our pipeline of
sales opportunities, strong forward visibility of revenues from our long term
contracts and consistent operational performance position us well for further
strong progress.
Our success in the first 4 months of 2009, a high level of sales activity and a
strong demand for outsourcing underpin our outlook for continued growth in the
current year and thereafter.
-ends-
For further information please contact:
Paul Pindar, Chief Executive
Shona Nichols, Corporate Communications Director
Tel: 020 7799 1525
Media enquiries:
Caroline Mooney
Capita press office
Tel: 0207 654 2152 or 0870 2400 488 (out of hours)
Andrew Lorenz
Financial Dynamics
Tel: 020 7269 7121
Notes to editors:
The 2009 Annual General Meeting will commence at 11.00am today at Deutsche
Bank, Winchester House, 1 Great Winchester Street, London EC2N 2DB.
The Capita Group Plc is the UK's leading provider of BPO and integrated
professional support service solutions. With 36,000 people at more than 300
sites, including 62 business centres across the UK, Ireland, the Channel
Islands and India, the Group uses its expertise, infrastructure and scale
benefits to transform its client's services, driving down costs and adding
value. Capita is quoted on the London Stock Exchange (CPI.L), and is a
constituent of the FTSE100 with revenues for 2008 of £2,441 million.
Further information on The Capita Group Plc can be found at: http://
www.capita.co.uk