Keller Group PLC
17 November 2006
17 November 2006
Keller Group plc
Trading Update
Keller Group plc ('Keller' or 'the Group'), the international ground engineering
specialist, today announces a trading update for its current financial year to
date.
Trading since the half year has been extremely good, culminating in an
outstanding performance in October. This reflects a continuation of the strong
growth in both sales and margins seen in the first half of the year.
Order intake has kept pace with sales and, as a result of the acquisitions of
Piling Contractors (August) and Anderson (October), the Group order book has
increased by around 15% since the end of June.
This strong performance is due to consistently high levels of activity and good
profitability across all our geographic segments. In the US, our foundations
businesses have continued to perform exceptionally well, with strong demand in
their commercial and public infrastructure markets. As expected, Suncoast's
sales are suffering because of the slowdown in the residential market, but it
has nonetheless reported excellent results for the year to date.
Elsewhere, the Group is taking full advantage of strong market conditions in
most European markets, Australia and the Middle East and is benefiting from
strengthening demand in Germany.
It is still too early to predict the impact of seasonal factors in November and
December. Nonetheless, given the strength of trading in the year to date, the
Board believes that Keller's results for the year ending 31 December 2006 will
be significantly above current market expectations.
Justin Atkinson, Chief Executive, commenting, said:
'We are currently enjoying good demand for our ground engineering solutions in
most parts of the Group and our strong sales growth continues to outstrip market
growth rates.
'Whilst we remain cautious about the sustainability of the extremely buoyant
trading in the US, we are confident of delivering further improvement in our
other geographic segments.'
For further information, please contact:
Keller Group plc
Justin Atkinson, Chief Executive 020 7616 7575
James Hind, Finance Director
Smithfield
Reg Hoare/Rupert Trefgarne 020 7360 4900
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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