Record orders at Enterprise
Article Date: Apr 02 2001Support services venture Enterprise has emerged refocused from its merger with A.R.M Services and today the board unveiled a record £500 million order book. James Crux reports.
Formerly a management and property services specialist, Aim-listed Enterprise recently completed the sale of its property portfolio and through a merger with A.R.M Services last August, it has successfully focused on the provision of support services to the utilities and local authority sectors.
Today, board members revealed that Enterprise has a record order book of £500 million including major contracts with blue chips such as BT, United Utilities, Scottish Power, Severn Trent, Thus and the Department of the Environment Northern Ireland. Finance director Graham McInnes was particularly excited by the contract with BT to 'manage their fixed line network'. This deal still has another three years to run and is worth £60 million a year to the group.
In February, the group acquired Berminghams, a supplier of infrastructure maintenance services to Lattice (formerly Transco). The purchase has opened up opportunities in the 'whole field of gas distribution' and the acquisition is 'performing ahead of budget' according to the board. The group now has a foot in all four utility sectors.
For the fourteen months to 31 December 2000, continuing sales were strong, increasing from £19.7 million to £58.1 million. Group revenues were also up at £70.9 million (£32 million), with £37 million of those sales coming from A.R.M. Services. McInnes explained that pre-tax profits were slightly below last year, at £2.9 million (£3.3 million), due to 'some quite heavy exceptionals' which included redundancies, reorganisation costs, a £1.2 million goodwill charge and the write-off of some debts. Conversely, with goodwill and exceptional items stripped out, profits were lifted from £3.8 million to £5.8 million.
Investors reacted positively to the news and the shares rose by 5p to a new 2001 high of 175p. The previous high was 171p and the low 117.5p.
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