Interserve trades in line with expectations

Interserve, the international services, maintenance and building group,says that "overall, the business is performing in line with the Board’s expectations", in its latest interim statement.

In Support Services its revenues continue to grow as the business benefited from the contracts it has won in the last eighteen months. However, as previously indicated, a number of the newer public sector contracts continue to be impacted by significant mobilisation and transition costs.

In Project Service the Group’s associate businesses in the Middle East have maintained their strong performance into 2010, despite lower activity levels in Dubai. The region’s workload has risen from the year end, benefiting in particular from the award of around £150 million of work in Qatar to date. Recent contract wins encompass both construction and services activities, including a three-year services contract with Maersk Oil Qatar for the supply of manpower and equipment to onshore and offshore facilities, worth around £20 million, and further substation construction awards in Qatar worth around £25 million.

The UK business continues to perform well, delivering progress versus the prior year as activity levels in the public and utilities sectors remain healthy.

Our principal Chief executive ,Adrian Ringrosemarkets, summarised by saying :" we believe that our business model of concentrating on long-term client relationships in our core sectors of expertise is a key strength, given the visibility of future workload it brings. A healthy future workload in excess of £6 billion (including the Group’s share of Middle East associates) affords the Group excellent visibility of around 90 per cent and 70 per cent of 2010 and 2011 anticipated¹ revenues respectively."