Christian Salvesen – Full Year Prelims to March 2004
Salvesen (Christian) PLC
08 June 2004
Preliminary Results Announcement
for the year to 31 March 2004
Financial Highlights
•Total turnover, including share of joint ventures, down 4% at £846m
(2003: £877m), with turnover in continuing businesses up 1%
•Pre-tax profit(1) decreased by 14.9% to £17.1m (2003: £20.1m)
•Reported profits improved by £11.8m to £3.6m profit (2003: loss of £8.2m)
•Earnings per share up by 4.45p to 1.36p (2003: loss per share of 3.09p)
•Free cashflow(2) up by £13.5m to £34.1m
•Net debt reduced by £24m to £109m
•Full year dividend payment maintained at 3.65p
(1) before exceptional items and goodwill amortisation
(2) net cash inflow before use of liquid resources, financing, dividends and
acquisitions and disposals
Operational highlights
United Kingdom
•Restructuring of UK business broadly complete
•Industrial business stabilised, with focus on improved productivity
•Broader relationships with key existing clients, providing innovative
solutions in new areas of operation
Mainland Europe
•Return to profitability in Iberian Industrial business through management
action
•French Industrial business – growing faster than the market and gaining
share
•Food & Consumer – continuing growth in the market-leading Iberian chilled
logistics joint venture
David Fish, Executive Chairman of Christian Salvesen, said:
‘Overall, 2004 has been a disappointing year for Christian Salvesen, although
there have been positive elements within our performance. We have begun the work
necessary to get the business back on track, but it will take some time for the
benefits to flow through fully into stronger performance.
‘We now need to look forward. We are concentrating on two areas: a recommitment
to growth together with improving productivity across all areas of the business.
We will further emphasise those areas of our business which are performing
strongly, and concentrate on providing an excellent service to existing and new
clients.
‘We expect underlying trading in the year to March 2005 to be broadly similar to
last year’s performance. The markets will remain competitive – but Salvesen is
becoming a more customer focused, efficient and innovative competitor.’
For further information please contact:
Christian Salvesen PLC 08.06.04: 020 7357 9477
David Fish, Executive Chairman
Julian Steadman, Finance Director
Frances Gibson-Smith, Head of Investor Relations
Thereafter: 01604 662600
Tulchan Communications 020 7353 4200
David Trenchard
Kirstie Hamilton
William Davidson
A briefing will be held for analysts at 0930 on Tuesday 8 June 2004 at the Media
Centre, The London Stock Exchange. An audio webcast of the presentation will be
available on
www.salvesen.com
from the afternoon of 8 June.
Chairman’s Statement
We have begun to see some progress in the business, which is now almost equally
balanced between the UK and continental European markets. But last year this
progress was uneven. An encouraging performance in continental Europe was offset
by a decline in the UK. In overall terms our performance has to be seen as
disappointing.
This was exacerbated by issues which arose towards the year-end in our food
processing business. Each was relatively minor, but the total impact was a
one-off charge of some £3m against the year’s profit. Although our cashflow was
unaffected, this prevented us from achieving our profit expectations. I should
add that half the charge resulted from the more conservative accounting approach
that we have adopted to this business after a review by our new finance
director.
Financial performance
Total turnover, including our share of joint ventures, decreased 3.6% to
£845.9m. For the continuing busi
