Chloride Group Plc, the British power protection company, is looking to expand further overseas and may be able to announce an acquisition at around the time of its interim results in early November. The group, which updated shareholders with a first-half trading statement on October 01, said it was "actively looking" at a number of bolt-on deals, especially in the Far East.
"We've got plenty of headroom on the balance sheet and unused committed facilities (of) around 80 million pounds ($144 million)," Finance Director Neil Warner told Reuters in a telephone interview. "I'm hopeful we will be able to announce something later this year," he added. Group debt currently stands at around 22 million pounds.
Chloride, which looks after the power systems for Wembley Stadium, as well as the new Terminal 5 building at London's Heathrow Airport, said its order book at the end of September was at record levels and there had been no sign of any fall-off in demand from the financial services sector.
Major UK-based customers include Barclays Plc and HSBC Holdings Plc, who use Chloride's power technology products to help protect their retail and Internet banking operations. "At the moment, we've not seeing any slowdown in demand for our products, but that's not to say we are immune from any downturn," said Warner.
Meanwhile, group sales and operating profits for the first six months are "significantly ahead" of the same period last year, with strong growth in service revenues, especially from the oil and gas industry. DB Power, the Indian power protection company where Chloride recently increased its stake to 49 percent, is also performing well and will be consolidated into the half-year accounts. For the full year to end-March 2009, analysts currently look for pretax profits of about 44.1 million pounds.
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