14 February 2013
Interim Management Statement
Halma, the leading safety, health and environmental technology group today makes an Interim Management Statement ("IMS"), prior to its financial year ending 30 March 2013, covering the period from 30 September 2012 to date.
Based on current trading and forecasts, the Board expects adjusted profit (see note 1) for the full year to be in line with market expectations.
The regional and sector trading patterns reported for the first six months of the financial year have been maintained. Good growth has continued in the USA and Asia whilst tougher trading conditions remain in the UK and Europe.
Our Industrial Safety sector has performed strongly. Health & Analysis is benefiting from recent acquisitions with good performances in Health Optics and Fluid Technology offsetting weakness in Photonics. Infrastructure Sensors is making solid progress with the expected improvement in Elevator Safety and softer trading in Automatic Door Sensors.
This financial year we have made five acquisitions and one disposal. All acquisitions, including MicroSurgical Technology and Longer Pump, which were acquired in December 2012 and January 2013 respectively, are trading well and in line with our expectations.
We have maintained strong returns and achieved good cash generation, which provide us with the financial capacity for further acquisitions and investment. We continue to search for opportunities across all of Halma's market sectors.
There have been no material events or transactions impacting the Group's financial position, which remains strong.
The results for the financial year ending 30 March 2013 are expected to be released on
13 June 2013.
New Reporting Sectors
Halma's products "protect life" and "improve the quality of life" in safety, health and environmental markets. Since 2005, we have reported our business under three sectors including two focused on Safety (Industrial Safety and Infrastructure Sensors) and one on Health and the Environment (Health & Analysis). All our businesses operate in markets with one or more of our long-term growth drivers: increasing Health & Safety regulation, increasing demand for healthcare and the increasing need for life-critical resources (such as energy and water).
Significant M&A activity in recent years has resulted in the Health & Analysis sector growing from ~30% of Group profit in 2005 to ~50% today. In future, the current Health & Analysis sector will be reported under two new sectors, namely Medical and Environmental & Analysis. The creation of a separate Medical sector reflects our growing presence in the medical devices market, in particular in ophthalmology and blood pressure monitoring.
The two safety-related sectors, Industrial Safety and Infrastructure Sensors, will be
re-named Process Safety and Infrastructure Safety respectively.
The new reporting sectors are intended to provide greater insight into the products, markets and market growth drivers which are supporting our strong performance and future prospects.
These new sectors include subsidiaries with similar end-markets which will continue to help Halma further develop market-driven strategies through collaboration. The fundamental Group philosophy of giving subsidiaries autonomy and resources to grow independently remains in place.
Group earnings are unaffected by this restatement. No management changes are directly related to this change. Halma's full year results for the 52-week period to 30 March 2013 will be reported under the new sectors.
