Summary
Order intake 9.5% lower than prior year (OCC -12.9%)
Revenue 1.6% lower than prior year (OCC -5.4%)
Order book of £175.9m 4.3% lower than December (OCC -0.1%)
Cost management programme accelerated in response to oil and gas slowdown
Strong growth in the Instruments division
Two acquisitions completed including £6.9m acquisition of M&M International Srl announced today
Launch of IQT3 and SI3 actuator ranges
Strong ongoing cash generation, 110% cash conversion
Interim dividend increased by 1.6% to 1.95p
Peter France, Chief Executive, commenting on the results, said:
"The continued weakness of the oil price and geopolitical uncertainty in some of our key markets resulted in a challenging trading environment during the first half, with lower overall activity levels and an increased number of project deferrals and cancellations.
Rotork has a lean business model and we constantly review our activities to optimise costs. We have responded to market conditions and accelerated a number of our ongoing cost management initiatives. At the same time we continue to see opportunities to gain market share and expand our product portfolio through organic development and acquisition. We will continue to invest in these opportunities to ensure that Rotork is well placed to make further progress over the medium to long term.
As in previous years we anticipate that our results will be weighted to the second half. Although we expect the oil and gas market to remain challenging, and the timing of order placement remains difficult to forecast, based on our current order book and project visibility, the Board expects overall performance to be in line with management expectations for the full year."
