Trading Statement

RNS Number : 2988L

Ricardo PLC

08 January 2009

 



   Ricardo Plc

8 January 2009

  Trading Update

Ricardo plc ('Ricardo' or 'the Company'), a market leading engineering, management and automotive consultancy employing over 1700 people worldwide, is today providing a trading update in respect of the five month period to the end of November 2008. Ricardo plc will announce its interim results for the six month period to 31 December 2008 on 27 February 2009.

The year has started well for Ricardo, progress is in line with our plans overall and operating profit in the first five months is slightly ahead of the same period last year. We are pleased with our success in growing the core technical consulting businesses across the group. Our diversification strategy has proved an effective engine for growth and added valuable and essential protection from some of the extreme market conditions in the automotive sector.

Our order book closed at the end of November at over £100m. Our balance sheet remains strong with net debt similar to the same time last year despite the impact of exchange rate movements on the value of our euro borrowings.

In the USA, some projects for the Detroit 'Big Three' automotive manufacturers have been curtailed and short term opportunities with them have virtually dried up. The impact of this on our US business has been compensated for by additional business in the commercial diesel and Government sectors.

Our European technical consulting businesses are increasingly working very closely together with much of the work being jointly won and delivered. Performance to date for these businesses has been in line with our expectations, helped by orders won in Europe and Asia, and in particular from Germany and Japan. European and Asian clients did not cut development programmes as rapidly as our US clients, but we did see some cancellations in December as the global economic conditions deteriorated. Nonetheless our December order intake was healthy and from a broad range of clients. We are again benefiting from the diversity of our customer base but expect to see further volatility in 2009.

Our niche manufacturing activity in Germany, which is more aligned to vehicle sales, has recently suffered from significant order cut backs and will require further restructuring.

The strategic consulting business has experienced a volatile trading period and its growth plans have been impacted, but it has so far maintained its contribution to the group.

In the current economic climate it is difficult to give guidance for the next six months with any degree of certainty. However the diversification strategy and the strong financial position and order book of the Company are such that, in the absence of any further significant deterioration in our markets, we continue to believe that our full year will show some progress compared to last year.

Further enquiries:

Ricardo plc

Dave Shemmans, Chief Executive                Tel: [phone]

Paula Bell, Group Finance Director

Website: www.ricardo.com

Gavin Anderson & Company

Fergus Wylie                                                  Tel: [phone]

Robert Speed

Michael Turner

 

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