Interserve shares gain on positive outlook for 2011
BRITISH maintenance and outsourcing firm Interserve said it expected a stable 2011 on a strong order book and better margins, sending its shares up 14.7 per cent to 268.5p.
“The consensus that is emerging for 2011 is very much stable in terms of revenue, which should be somewhere around the £1.8-1.9bn level,” said chief executive Adrian Ringrose.
The company said yesterday that trading in the second half was in line with its estimates, helped by a margin-expansion drive at its support services business and strength in project services.
“We would expect to see continued growth in our support services division,” Ringrose said. “And we’d probably expect to see our project services division come back a bit in 2011.”
Interserve said it won more than £500m worth of contracts in recent months. It has a future workload of more than £5bn, around £1.5bn of which relates to 2011.