- Home
- About Us
- Corporate Responsibility
- Customer Access
- Legislation
- Publications
- Press & Newsroom
- Jobs
- Links
- Contact Us
Press & Newsroom
Biffa Plc - update on trading
4th April 2007
BIFFA PLC
PRE-CLOSE PERIOD TRADING STATEMENT
Biffa Plc, today announces an update on trading for the 52 weeks ending 30 March 2007 in advance of announcing its preliminary results on 12 June 2007.
In the Collection Division, trading in our Municipal business continues to go well and we are on track to deliver satisfactory revenue growth boosted by recent contract wins such as that for the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral. At Leicester, we are making good progress with modifications to the treatment and recycling facility so that by mid-2007 we expect this contract to move into profit.
In the Industrial and Commercial collection sector, while continuing to grow our national account business, we have also sought to improve levels of customer retention in our locally-managed accounts. Among other initiatives to achieve this, we have implemented selective price increases instead of imposing a standard increase across all accounts. This has constrained profits during the second half so that the contribution from the Collection Division for the full year will be below that achieved last year.
In our Resource Recovery and Landfill Division, we are seeing a continuing strong performance. November saw the opening of Cottonmount as part of our programme of opening new and extending existing landfill sites. The division is
expected to show profitable growth over the year as the continuing increase in average unit revenue more than offsets the decline in volume.
Trading in the Special Waste Division has returned to more normal levels of activity following a first-half which benefited from a number of one-off, higher margin contracts. The Division is, however, expected to show profitable growth over the year.
The Power Generation business has successfully added a further 4 MW to existing wholly-owned capacity. The Division performed well in the second half and it, too, is expected to deliver profitable growth over the year.
Levels of free cash flow for the year as a whole and closing net debt are anticipated to be better than expectations, reflecting improved working capital management and tighter control over capital expenditure on fleet and containers.
Overall, we expect to deliver 2006/7 revenues and profits towards the lower end of market expectations. We believe that the Group is well positioned to deliver growth in revenue and profits in 2007/8 and beyond.
|








