Interim Results

Inspace Plc 26 September 2006 Press Release 26 September 2006 Inspace plc ('Inspace' or 'the Company') Interim Results for the six months ended 30 June 2006 Inspace plc (AIM:INSP), one of the UK's leading specialist service providers to the social housing market, announces its Interim Results for the six months ended 30 June 2006. Highlights • Turnover in line at £62.6 million* • Operating profit in line at £3.6 million* • Adjusted diluted earnings per share at 3.74 pence** • Interim dividend of 1.07 pence (2005 pro forma: 0.966 pence)*** • Order book and frameworks of £1.35 billion (2005: £0.45 billion) • 80% of social housing turnover for 2007 secured* • 64% of social housing turnover for 2008 secured* • Cash of £6.7 million (2005: £3.6 million) • Operating cash conversion of 80% (2005: 61%)**** • Shareholders' funds of £17.8 million (2005: £13.6 million) * Based on market forecasts ** Year-on-year movement distorted by shares issued on flotation *** Time apportioned dividend to post flotation shareholders **** Proportion of operating profit converted into cash from operating activities Commenting on the Results, Colin Enticknap, Executive Chairman of Inspace plc, said: 'We are pleased to report continued progress on a number of fronts. First half results are in line with market forecasts; the recently secured social housing maintenance contract for the borough of Hinckley & Bosworth is expected to contribute sales of some £15 million over 7 years; and with the successful Widacre acquisition, our size has almost doubled and our workload visibility trebled.' 'We now have a broader portfolio of businesses, better cash generation and a stronger board. Perhaps most importantly, we are now firmly positioned as one of the UK's largest specialist service providers to the robust social housing market, with a unique ability to provide a comprehensive, integrated solution covering maintenance, 'Decent Homes' stock reinvestment, regeneration and new build needs. We look forward to the future with renewed enthusiasm.' - Ends - For further information: Inspace plc Colin Enticknap, Executive Chairman Tel: +44 (0) 1462 678 910 colin.enticknap@inspace.co.uk Andrew Telfer, Chief Financial Officer andrew.telfer@inspace.co.uk www.inspace.co.uk Seymour Pierce Mark Percy, Corporate Finance Tel: +44 (0) 20 7107 8000 markpercy@seymourpierce.com www.seymourpierce.com Media enquiries: Abchurch Henry Harrison-Topham Tel: +44 (0) 20 7398 7700 henry.ht@abchurch-group.com www.abchurch-group.com Executive Chairman's statement Overview The last six months has been an intensely busy, sometimes challenging, but ultimately successful period for the group. Financially, we have delivered first half results in line with market expectations. Operationally, we have moved forward the transformation programme affecting our non-housing interests and strengthened relationships with key customers across all parts of our business. Despite a series of tendering frustrations, we have not allowed pricing levels to be compromised by the demand for short term news flow, and have now been rewarded by a significant increase in the number of tender opportunities flowing through the sales pipeline. Strategically, we successfully completed the acquisition of Widacre Limited on 31 August 2006, a business that will significantly strengthen our social housing capability, the visibility of our forward order book, and ultimately the quality of our future earnings. The acquisition Shareholders will recognise that the board is pursuing a growth strategy, and that we expect social housing to be the main driver of that growth. Until now, our social housing activity has centred around local authority maintenance contracts, particularly those that have offered spin-off 'Decent Homes' stock reinvestment work. Future growth targets demand that we accelerate the expansion of this maintenance customer base, and that we now also expand into stand-alone 'Decent Homes' contracts - those tendered in their own right. In maintenance terms, our challenge will be to find an increasing population of new customers as the market matures and competition increases. We see Registered Social Landlords - commonly referred to as RSLs - as important targets in this respect. They are already becoming much more active in the maintenance market, induced by new measures recently introduced by Government under its audit and inspection regime which mean that RSLs who fail to properly maintain their stock risk losing grant funding. We face a different challenge in expanding into stand-alone 'Decent Homes' contracts. Experience has taught us that our core skills, managing a directly employed 'blue collar' workforce, are insufficient in this market. They need supplementing with contracting skills, the ability to procure, manage and control a subcontract workforce. It is no coincidence that many of these contracts have been won by contractors rather than maintenance specialists. The acquisition significantly addresses both these issues. Firstly, Widacre's social housing business has strong relationships with many of the UK's largest and highest spending RSLs; its RSL customer base accounts for more than half of the UK's RSL managed housing supply. Secondly, it naturally has very strong contracting and supply chain management skills that are directly transferable to the 'Decent Homes' market. Furthermore, as we first mentioned in our AGM statement back in May, Government policy is changing in relation to 'Decent Homes' expenditure. As has now been made clear from the recent discussion paper entitled From Decent Homes to Sustainable Communities, future 'Decent Homes' funding will be allocated to schemes capable of delivering mixed sustainable communities through major transformation of estates. Transformation, in this context, will be characterised by housing for rent alongside housing for sale and the building of new homes alongside the refurbishment of existing. Widacre's social and affordable housing businesses are ideally positioned to support us in this unfolding market, and Inspace will now be uniquely positioned to provide a comprehensive, integrated service to all types of social housing landlord. An additional strategic benefit is, of course, the strong order book and significant earnings visibility gained from Widacre's secured social housing orders and frameworks, which total over £900 million. This reflects specialist new build social housing work to be undertaken under long term open-book partnering frameworks, similar in concept to 'Decent Homes' contracts. Widacre brings with it an excellent, well motivated workforce, a culture closely aligned and easily integrated with ours through its shared Willmott Dixon heritage, and strong leadership from Chris Durkin, who now joins our main board as chief operating officer of our wider social and affordable housing interests. The board believes that the acquisition undoubtedly broadens and strengthens our underlying business, and will enable us to build upon the results already achieved during the first half year. Financial highlights Turnover was in line with expectation at £62.6 million (2005:£70.8m), reflecting the reduction in Inspace Maintain during its carefully planned transformation programme, the winding down of Inspace Complete's Job Centre Plus refurbishment contract, and our increased sensitivity to seasonality in public sector spending patterns as we continue to grow Inspace Partnerships. An improved operating margin of 5.7% (2005:5.0%) meant that operating profit remained at £3.6 million despite the reduced turnover. With no bank borrowings, and interest on deposit of £0.1 million, pre-tax profit grew by 6.8% to reach £3.7 million (2005:£3.4m). Tax relief on options exercised led to a greater increase in post-tax profit, which improved by 20.0% to £2.8 million. Diluted earnings per share were 3.74 pence on an adjusted basis (2005:3.94p), reflecting the shares issued on flotation. Our balance sheet continued to strengthen, with net current assets of £16.7 million (2005:£12.7m) and shareholders' funds of £17.8 million (2005:£13.6m). Cash conversion also improved to 80% (2005:61%), with a half year cash balance of £6.7 million (2005:£3.6m). Importantly, the most significant improvement relates to the quality and scale of our forward order book. With the Widacre acquisition now complete and the integration process under way, secured orders and frameworks have increased three-fold from £450 million to £1.35 billion. Dividend An interim dividend of 1.07p per share will be paid on 2 November 2006 to those shareholders on the register on 6 October 2006. The pro forma 2005 interim dividend, paid to post flotation shareholders, stood at 0.966p on a time apportioned basis. Operational Performance With operating activity about to increase significantly, our portfolio of business streams has been aligned into three divisions - Social Housing, Affordable Housing and Corporate Assets. Social Housing accounted for 48% (2005:42%) of group turnover in the first half year, continuing the growth pattern established over recent years. This was despite a significant reduction against forecast spend by one customer, a factor expected to also impact upon the second half year. The recently secured repair and maintenance contract for the borough of Hinckley and Bosworth, expected to contribute sales of more than £15 million over seven years, was a welcome success for the sales team, coming at the end of an unusually quiet tendering period. Post incentive operating margins improved to 8.0% (2005:6.4%), influenced by the timing of performance based incentive payments and the expected migration of 'schedule of rates' contracts towards full partnering arrangements. With Widacre's Social Housing interests now expanding this division, its proportional weighting will undoubtedly continue to grow, probably approaching 60% in full year terms. Affordable Housing, which comes entirely with the Widacre acquisition, will only feature in full year figures. Corporate Assets, which brings together our non-housing maintenance and interiors activities, accounted for the remaining 52% (2005:58%) of group turnover. This part of our business has been going through the early stages of a comprehensive change programme, aimed at realigning its customer base around those offering greater visibility and resilience, and upon improving efficiency levels. Whilst this undoubtedly affected turnover in the short term, operating margins held up reasonably well at 3.6% (2005:4.1%). Future Priorities With the acquisition just behind us, our attention has already turned towards integration and the embedding of our new structure, a process expected to culminate with the new businesses adopting the Inspace brand early in 2007. In the meantime, we cannot afford to be distracted from the need to secure a healthy stream of new orders - the lifeblood of a growth business such as ours. In Social Housing terms, secured orders and frameworks accounted for 94% of 2006, 80% of 2007 and 64% of 2008 consensus forecasts. With organic growth from existing accounts expected to fuel the outstanding balance for this year, our main priority will be to secure the shortfall for next year and build a more robust platform for future years. We will look first to our excellent pipeline of core repair and maintenance contracts, where tender throughput is once again at a very healthy level. Alongside this, the inherited pipeline of ' regeneration and new build' partnering frameworks is equally strong and tender activity equally intense. Having been appointed on fourteen of the sixteen frameworks previously tendered, our optimism for future success in this area is high. With Affordable Housing, the longer 'incubation period' for new projects demands that we plan even further ahead. Activity levels for 2006 have been secure for some time, and 2007 activity will predominantly revolve around the Eastside joint venture developments in East London where the relationship with Circle Anglia, one of the UK's largest RSLs, is proving particularly successful. Focus has therefore moved to 2008, with the priority being to bring the London Wide Initiative developments, which offer enormous potential, to early fruition, and to nurture the next generation of joint venture relationships with new RSL partners. By contrast, Corporate Assets inherently offers less workload visibility. Maintenance contracts are usually shorter in duration than in social housing and there is a greater dependence upon discretionary 'project' expenditure to supplement the core maintenance budgets. Interiors work demands a constant throughput of intense, short term projects, although these do invariably generate higher margins and surplus working capital. Our challenge here will be to secure the remaining 19% of workload required for 2006, and to continue to improve visibility for future years through an increased proportion of more substantial, longer term contracts. Encouraging progress has already been made in shifting the sales pipeline towards the substantial £7 billion per annum public non-housing maintenance market; the next and most important stage will be to convert that pipeline into live contracts. With social housing revenues now increasing towards our 70% target, our dependence upon Corporate Assets is expected to be sustained at around 30% as we move into 2007. Summary Our people have continued to invest enormous energy and commitment into this business over the last six months, often more so than could reasonably be expected. I thank them all for their considerable efforts, and for their important achievements. It may not be immediately apparent from the headline results, but this period will mark an important stage in the group's unfolding success story. With the acquisition, our size has almost doubled and workload visibility has trebled. We have a broader portfolio of businesses, better cash generation and a stronger board. Perhaps most importantly, we are now firmly positioned as one of the UK's largest specialist service providers to the robust social housing market, with a unique ability to provide a comprehensive, integrated solution covering maintenance, 'Decent Homes' stock reinvestment, regeneration and new build needs. Colin Enticknap Executive Chairman 26 September 2006 Group Profit and Loss Account Unaudited Unaudited Audited half year half year year ended 30 Jun 2006 30 Jun 2005 31 Dec 2005 Notes £'000 £'000 £'000 Turnover 2 62,642 70,815 147,527 Cost of sales (45,430) (54,341) (113,802) Gross profit 17,212 16,474 33,725 Administrative expenses Excluding exceptional items (13,625) (12,903) (25,865) Exceptional items - - (418) (13,625) (12,903) (26,283) Operating profit 2 Excluding exceptional items 3,587 3,571 7,860 Exceptional items - - (418) 3,587 3,571 7,442 Interest receivable 91 92 223 Interest payable and similar charges - (218) (218) Profit on ordinary activities before 3,678 3,445 7,447 taxation Tax on profit on ordinary activities 3 (842) (1,082) (2,310) Profit for the financial period 2,836 2,363 5,137 Unadjusted earnings per ordinary share: (pence) Basic 5 4.19 4.04 8.17 Diluted 5 4.18 3.94 8.03 Adjusted earnings per ordinary share: (pence) Basic 5 3.75 4.04 8.64 Diluted 5 3.74 3.94 8.49 All activities are continuing Group Balance Sheet Unaudited Unaudited Audited half year half year year ended 30 Jun 2006 30 Jun 2005 31 Dec 2005 (Re-stated) Notes £'000 £'000 £'000 Fixed assets Tangible assets 1,150 899 1,058 Current assets Stocks 6 464 277 335 Debtors 7 32,040 33,230 30,350 Cash at bank and in hand 6,728 3,648 6,084 39,232 37,155 36,769 Creditors: amounts falling due within one year 8 (22,553) (24,469) (21,873) Net current assets 16,679 12,686 14,896 17,829 13,585 15,954 Capital and reserves Called up share capital 1,356 1,343 1,343 Share premium 10,387 9,864 10,107 Capital redemption reserve 3 3 3 Profit and loss account 6,083 2,375 4,501 9 17,829 13,585 15,954 Group Cash Flow Statement Unaudited Unaudited Audited half year half year year ended 30 Jun 2006 30 Jun 2005 31 Dec 2005 Notes £'000 £'000 £'000 Cash flow from operating activities 10 2,870 2,168 6,707 Returns on investments and servicing of finance 90 (126) 5 Taxation paid (1,059) (484) (1,706) Capital expenditure and financial investment (287) (498) (861) Equity dividends paid 4 (1,254) (4,274) (4,923) Cash flow before use of liquid resources and financing 360 (3,214) (778) Financing 284 6,825 6,825 Increase in cash 644 3,611 6,047 Reconciliation of net cash flow to movement in net funds Increase in cash 644 3,611 6,047 Opening net funds 6,084 37 37 Closing net funds 6,728 3,648 6,084 Notes to the Interim Results 1. Basis of preparation The interim financial information for the six months to 30 June 2006 has been prepared on the basis of the accounting policies applied in the Group's statutory accounts for the year to 31 December 2005 with the exception of the application of FRS 20 (share based payments) in replacement of UITF 17. The adoption of FRS 20 has not required any adjustment in respect of prior periods. As a result of the adoption of FRS 21 and UITF 40 in the statutory accounts for the year to 31 December 2005 the balance sheet and the cash flow statement for the half year ended 30 June 2005 have been re-stated. The audit report on the 2005 annual report and accounts was unqualified and did not contain statements under section 237(2) or (3) of the Companies Act 1985. The accounts have been filed at Companies House. The Directors expect current accounting policies to apply to the accounts for the year to 31 December 2006. The half year information has not been audited and does not represent statutory accounts. 2. Segmental analysis Unaudited Unaudited Audited half year half year year ended 30 Jun 2006 30 Jun 2005 31 Dec 2005 £'000 £'000 £'000 Turnover Social Housing 30,171 29,482 61,201 Affordable Housing - - - Corporate Assets Maintenance 25,462 31,105 60,821 Interiors 7,009 10,228 25,505 62,642 70,815 147,527 Operating profit Social Housing 2,416 1,873 4,529 Affordable Housing - - - Corporate Assets Maintenance 961 1,334 2,167 Interiors 210 364 1,164 3,587 3,571 7,860 3. Taxation The taxation charge for the period has been applied at the current rate of corporation tax and includes appropriate allowance for items not deductable for corporation tax purposes and deferred taxation. Taxation relief of £0.30 million has also been accrued for in respect of shares issued under employee incentive schemes. 4. Dividends A final dividend of 1.85p per ordinary share was paid in respect of 2005 earnings on 24 May 2006 totalling £1.25 million. An interim dividend of 1.07p per ordinary share is proposed for payment on 2 November 2006 totalling £0.73 million. 5. Earnings per share Earnings per share are based upon the average number of ordinary shares in issue during the period of 67,737,067 (June 2005: 58,532,666; December 2005: 62,872,928). The diluted earnings per share are based upon the weighted average number of 67,848,547 (June 2005: 59,952,559; December 2005: 63,975,884) ordinary shares having taken into account the dilutive effect of shares which have been made available to employees under existing incentive schemes. The unadjusted earnings per share for the period are based upon the profit after tax of £2.84 million (June 2005: £2.36 million; December 2005: £5.14 million). The adjusted earnings per share highlight the impact of the exceptional items during 2005 of £0.42 million and the impact of tax relief in respect of shares issued under share incentive schemes of £0.30 million (June 2005: nil; December 2005: £0.13 million). Unaudited Unaudited Audited half year half year year ended 30 Jun 2006 30 Jun 2005 31 Dec 2005 (Re-stated) £'000 £'000 £'000 6. Stocks Stock of raw materials 464 277 335 7. Debtors Trade debtors 11,095 16,849 13,445 Prepayments 2,360 1,568 925 Deferred tax - 13 - Amounts recoverable on contracts 18,585 14,800 15,980 32,040 33,230 30,350 8. Creditors amounts falling due within one year Trade creditors 12,383 12,292 11,522 Payments on account 2,579 1,727 1,656 Corporation tax 850 1,082 1,064 Other taxes and social security 3,389 4,127 1,908 Accruals 3,341 5,241 5,712 Deferred tax 11 - 11 22,553 24,469 21,873 9. Reconciliation of movements in equity Unaudited Unaudited Audited shareholders' funds half year half year year ended 30 Jun 2006 30 Jun 2005 31 Dec 2005 (Re-stated) £'000 £'000 £'000 Profit for the financial period 2,836 2,363 5,137 Dividends (1,254) (4,274) (4,923) 1,582 (1,911) 214 Call on share capital - 530 530 Purchase of own shares - (3) (3) Issue of shares under option 293 - 244 Issue of shares - 10,054 10,054 Costs associated with issue of shares - (613) (613) Net proceeds from issue of shares 293 9,968 10,212 Movement in equity shareholders' funds 1,875 8,057 10,426 Opening shareholders' funds 15,954 5,528 5,528 Closing shareholders' funds 17,829 13,585 15,954 During the period options in respect of 664,327 shares were exercised under Director and employee incentive schemes. An additional 779,502 share options in place at 30 June 2006 are yet to be exercised. 10. Cash flows Unaudited Unaudited Audited half year half year year ended 30 Jun 2006 30 Jun 2005 31 Dec 2005 (Re-stated) £'000 £'000 £'000 Reconciliation of operating profit to net cash inflow from operating activities Operating profit on ordinary activities 3,587 3,571 7,442 Depreciation 197 180 383 Increase in stock and amounts recoverable on (2,734) (436) (1,674) contracts Decrease/(increase) in debtors 917 (8,033) (3,988) Increase in payments on account 923 394 323 (Decrease)/increase in trade and other creditors (29) 6,492 3,977 Non-cash cost of share based payments 9 - 244 Net cash inflow from operating activities 2,870 2,168 6,707 Analysis of change in net funds in year Opening cash at bank and in hand 6,084 37 37 Increase in cash in year 644 3,611 6,047 Closing net funds 6,728 3,648 6,084 11. Interim Report Further copies of the interim report are available from the registered office of Inspace plc or www.inspace.co.uk - Ends - This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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