VT Closes in on Military Contracts

VT Group is closing in on two significant military service contracts and hopes to become preferred bidder on a waste management private finance bid in Wakefield that it said could double its order book by the end of the financial year in March. By the end of September, the group, which is focused on shipbuilding and defense services group, had lifted its order book by $413.6m to $7.66b compared with the interim period last year, thanks to a $310.1m shipbuilding deal for Trinidad and Tobago and regular contracts of up to $103.4m. Mike Murphy, analyst at Panmure Gordon, reportedly said the two military deals – covering flight training and air tanker services – would take the group’s order book to at least $10.3b by the end of the year. In the six months to the end of September, pre-tax profits including intangibles rose 31 per cent to $70.7m on revenue that rose 23 per cent to $1.2b. Following the spin-off, the group plans to focus exclusively on higher margin engineering-based services. [Source: The Financial Times Limited]