Mouchel Parkman reports 18 per cent increase in half-year revenue

Mouchel Parkman, the management and engineering services group, reports another successful half-year of trading in the period to 31 January 2007.
In a presentation to the City this morning, chief executive Richard Cuthbert and finance director Kevin Young reported an 18 per cent increase in half-year revenue to £206.4 million and a 17 per cent rise in profit before tax to £14.3 million.
Margins were maintained at 6.9 per cent and earnings per share were up 18 per cent to 9.3 pence.
Mouchel Parkman has enjoyed an active six months of trading, during which time it gained two major new contracts for its road maintenance and network management joint venture company, AccordMP (with Transport for London and the London Borough of Hillingdon) and successfully concluded its negotiations with Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council for a major bundled-services outsourcing contract in the North West.
Mouchel Parkman also made three significant acquisitions in the half year just ended. In November it simultaneously acquired Ewan Group, Hornagold and Hills, and Traffic Support Limited (TSL) for a total consideration in the region of £50 million.
The combined effect of these acquisitions and the steady growth of the company became evident last month when, in the influential NCE Consultants File league table of UK engineering firms, Mouchel Parkman leapt up the rankings to be placed as one of the industry's top three in all its core markets. Even in more specialist markets like project management and rail engineering, Mouchel Parkman is now ranked as one of the industry's top five and overall Mouchel Parkman is reported as the second largest employer of technical staff in the UK.
Richard Cuthbert is more than satisfied with performance to date:
"This is a good set of results. Our order book now stands at an all-time record £1.35 billion and our pipeline of opportunities stands at £1.2 billion, so we're able to show strong forward visibility of earnings to our shareholders and offer stability and security to our clients and our staff.
"We're also involved in some exciting projects, at home and overseas. Contracts such as the Rochdale and Oldham bundled services commissions offer the potential to transform the way in which municipal services are provided to the public and we're fortunate to be at the vanguard of such partnerships.
"Tendering for the M25 DBFO has moved into a new phase and, as part of the FLOW Consortium, we're a member of the team that's currently managing the M25.
"Our acquisition of TSL, together with our involvement in the Highways Agency's Active Traffic Management scheme on the M42 motorway, has been particularly important to us since it shifts the emphasis of our highways business towards the higher value, technologically-based solutions that will be an ever-increasing element in the way we manage our urban and inter-urban networks in the future.
"Overseas, in the Middle East, we're providing project management and infrastructure engineering support on some of the world's largest municipal developments in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
"Much closer to home, we're using the new expertise brought by Ewan Group to get involved in more strategic opportunities in the water industry, working with the water plcs to prepare for the next asset management cycle, AMP5. By contrast, in Greenwich, we're project managing the restoration of the Cutty Sark, a vessel that we're most certainly aiming to keep out of water!"

Email: richard.oakley@mouchelparkman.com