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| Share Name | Share Symbol | Market | Stock Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atkins(WS) | ATK | London | Ordinary Share |
| Price Change | Price Change % | Share Price | Last Trade
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.00 | 0.00% | 2,081.00 | 01:00:00 |
| Open Price | Low Price | High Price | Close Price | Previous Close |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2,081.00 | 2,081.00 |
| Top Posts |
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Posted at 26/6/2013 11:42 by chinese investor Thank Goodness !Chinese Investor 13 Jun'13 - 12:21 - 975 of 977 Thank Goodness I Accumulated ! (Good Results) |
Posted at 11/1/2006 08:58 by judge jury STOCKWATCH - WS Atkins rated 'add' at DKW which initiates coverage 11 January 2006 AFX International Focus LONDON (AFX) - Shares in WS Atkins PLC are rated 'add' at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, which initiated coverage of the stock with an 805 pence price target. DKW said the focus of WS Atkins is back on its core strength, engineering consultancy, and believes that is an area that offers attractive growth potential. 'We believe UK engineering consultancy is a growth area, driven by an ever more complex operating environment for organisations in the public and private sectors,' the broker said in a note to investors. |
Posted at 01/3/2005 12:42 by tonyleongson Just taking a breather before the next leg up.From IC 22 December 2004 WS ATKINS (ATK) BUY 689p - engineering consultant - Atkins has made a good recovery since a disastrous profit warning back in October 2002 pushed the group to the brink of bankruptcy and claimed management scalps. This hasn't gone unnoticed in the City and Atkins' shares have risen twelvefold since then. So, with the urgent problems now resolved, the group's priority now is to rebuild profit margins. So far, it's been successful - they have surged. From 4.5 per cent a year ago, the operating margin on continuing operations has now hit 5.8 per cent. This is in line with what Atkins managed before 2002's profit warning. This margin recovery has come as the group has rationalised its portfolio of contracts and has cut costs on loss-making ones. Management is also being more choosy about the work it is taking on. Atkins' finance director, Robert MacLeod, says there's further margin growth to come, but he won't be drawn as to how much. City analysts expect the group to be making margins of over 6 per cent next year and, within two years, the margin could top 7 per cent. Meanwhile, work should keep pouring in as the markets that the group operates in are strong. For one thing, the construction sector is buoyant. This is important for Atkins, as many of its services are construction-related In the group's first-half results, issued earlier this month, the only disappointment was that Atkins' business with London Underground isn't performing as well as had been hoped. Although the Metronet joint venture, in which Atkins is an investor, is performing well - first-half profits rose £1.8m to £5.5m - extra work hasn't come through as hoped. Under the deal's structure, Atkins is supposed to provide extra services, such as station modernisations. But it has taken longer than expected for this work to appear. Consequently, profits from such activities slumped from £2.5m in the first half of last year to £300,000 this year. However, the work hasn't disappeared forever - London Underground's tatty stations must be improved eventually, so this blip should be made good. Atkins also has a balance sheet stuffed with cash - £76m at the end of September - and the ability to generate lots more. After nearly going bust a couple of years back, when debts rose above £100m, such strong cash generation is a healthy development. In fact, cash generation is so strong that the group's management seems to be struggling to know what to do with it. While some acquisitions look likely, as Atkins wants to offer more services to its clients, such deals will not be big. Instead, management will use the group's funds to hike the dividend. It was doubled in the first half to 4p and further strong growth seems likely. Cash is also plugging the pension deficit, which currently stands at an ugly £69m. We have twice recommended buying shares in Atkins - in August 2003 and then in January this year. However, the picture is different now from the way it looked back then. Atkins is no longer a business in recovery mode. It's now in a growth phase with no sign that the pace is letting up. Yet the shares still look inexpensive, trading on 15 times underlying earnings for the year to next March, and around 13 times for the year to March 2006. Given the group's impressive performance so far, we think it is only right to recommend buying Atkins' shares once again. Buy. |
Posted at 22/12/2004 14:52 by tonyleongson Tipped in IC22 December 2004 WS ATKINS (ATK) 689p - engineering consultant - Atkins has made a good recovery since a disastrous profit warning back in October 2002 pushed the group to the brink of bankruptcy and claimed management scalps. This hasn't gone unnoticed in the City and Atkins' shares have risen twelvefold since then. So, with the urgent problems now resolved, the group's priority now is to rebuild profit margins. So far, it's been successful - they have surged. From 4.5 per cent a year ago, the operating margin on continuing operations has now hit 5.8 per cent. This is in line with what Atkins managed before 2002's profit warning. This margin recovery has come as the group has rationalised its portfolio of contracts and has cut costs on loss-making ones. Management is also being more choosy about the work it is taking on. Atkins' finance director, Robert MacLeod, says there's further margin growth to come, but he won't be drawn as to how much. City analysts expect the group to be making margins of over 6 per cent next year and, within two years, the margin could top 7 per cent. Meanwhile, work should keep pouring in as the markets that the group operates in are strong. For one thing, the construction sector is buoyant. This is important for Atkins, as many of its services are construction-related areas of importance, such as transport infrastructure spending, are also growing strongly. Spending on UK road and rail renewals and upgrades is forecast to grow from current levels of around £6bn a year to over £7bn a year by the end of the decade. In the group's first-half results, issued earlier this month, the only disappointment was that Atkins' business with London Underground isn't performing as well as had been hoped. Although the Metronet joint venture, in which Atkins is an investor, is performing well - first-half profits rose £1.8m to £5.5m - extra work hasn't come through as hoped. Under the deal's structure, Atkins is supposed to provide extra services, such as station modernisations. But it has taken longer than expected for this work to appear. Consequently, profits from such activities slumped from £2.5m in the first half of last year to £300,000 this year. However, the work hasn't disappeared forever - London Underground's tatty stations must be improved eventually, so this blip should be made good. Atkins also has a balance sheet stuffed with cash - £76m at the end of September - and the ability to generate lots more. After nearly going bust a couple of years back, when debts rose above £100m, such strong cash generation is a healthy development. In fact, cash generation is so strong that the group's management seems to be struggling to know what to do with it. While some acquisitions look likely, as Atkins wants to offer more services to its clients, such deals will not be big. Instead, management will use the group's funds to hike the dividend. It was doubled in the first half to 4p and further strong growth seems likely. Cash is also plugging the pension deficit, which currently stands at an ugly £69m. We have twice recommended buying shares in Atkins - in August 2003 and then in January this year. However, the picture is different now from the way it looked back then. Atkins is no longer a business in recovery mode. It's now in a growth phase with no sign that the pace is letting up. Yet the shares still look inexpensive, trading on 15 times underlying earnings for the year to next March, and around 13 times for the year to March 2006. Given the group's impressive performance so far, we think it is only right to recommend buying Atkins' shares once again. Buy. |
Posted at 02/12/2004 18:52 by tonyleongson Resist taking profits at Atkins WS Atkins, the consulting engineer, has suffered some uncomfortable associations in the past couple of years. After a disastrous profits warning in 2002 the shares collapsed by more than 90pc to a low of 52p and Atkins found itself mentioned in the same breath as those PFI black sheep - Amey and Jarvis. Amey was crippled by aggressive accounting and Jarvis, still limping on, by aggressive pricing. Atkins, though, was a different animal. Since their 52p low in Autumn 2002, Atkins' shares have recovered to 687p - down 18 after yesterday's half-year results. Unlike Amey and Jarvis, its problems had nothing to do with business practices but with the troubled implementation of a systems upgrade. The inevitable management clear out cleared the way for some fresh ideas and the company is now sitting on £76m of cash, a £1.8 billion order book and rapidly improving profit margins. Turnover is declining but chief executive Keith Clarke is more interested in margins and the bottom line, which means focusing on more attractive contracts. That attention is paying off. First half pre-tax profits climbed 50pc to £26.6m as margins improved from 4.5pc to 5.8pc. "Top line growth will follow," Mr Clarke said. With the Government committed to billions of pounds of infrastructure spending until 2010 and 70pc of Atkins' business in the public sector, there is still ample room for the anticipated growth. Added to which, its 20pc stake in the Metronet tube consortium should soon start generating the promised returns. Atkins is no longer a cheap stock but followers of Questor will have enjoyed the ride. We tipped it at 287½p and again at 458p. Tempting as it may seem, investors should resist taking profits. Trading on 15 times forecast earnings with a 1.5pc prospective yield, there is still some long-term upside. |
Posted at 24/8/2004 07:51 by tonyleongson 26/03/2004 WS Atkins plc Investor Presentation WS Atkins plc ("Atkins") is making a presentation to investors and analysts in London today. Senior managers from each of Atkins' divisions will describe aspects of their businesses in some detail. The complete presentation is available for download as a PDF file: |
Posted at 23/1/2004 07:26 by tonyleongson Tipped in todays IC-------------------- 23 January 2004 WS ATKINS (ATK) 517p - engineering consultancy - WS Atkins has been one of the stock market's star performers over the past year. Its shares have raced up from a late-2002 low of 52p, as the group provided firm evidence to investors that it is putting its house in order. Worries about Atkins' performance first emerged when the civil engineering consultancy told the City that its IT systems weren't working properly. That led to profits collapsing and debts spiralling upwards as it failed to bill customers. Its shares plummeted. It didn't help that the commercial construction markets in the UK and US were weak anyway, meaning profits were hard to come by. Since then, the position has improved. Debt has dropped from £105m in September 2002 to just £26m a year later. This has been achieved partly through paying close attention to cash-generation - Atkins generated free-cash-flows of £27m in the first half of the current year, compared with a £54m outflow in the first half of last year - and by selling assets. The troublesome US operations were offloaded for £11.3m in September. A £20m refund of bid costs has also helped cut debt. Atkins incurred these costs when successfully tendering for a contract to run part of London Underground's infrastructure. By the end of March, stockbroker Arbuthnot expects the group's balance sheet to contain net cash. Aside from debt reduction, Atkins' other main priority is to push profit margins higher. These collapsed to under 1 per cent last year, from over 7 per cent previously. The group is cutting costs, and claims to have won new work at higher margins. It says it sees margins moving towards 6 per cent in the short to medium term. The downside of this focus on housekeeping has been that Atkins has passed up some growth opportunities. In the first half of 2003-04, organic revenue growth was just 5 per cent - not much compared with the growth in the mid-teens that Atkins so often delivered. But as long as its reputation hasn't been tarnished too much by the upheaval of 2002, Atkins should be able to return to higher levels of growth at some point in the future. The group has a strong position advising on infrastructure projects, such as road building programmes. And with government spending on public infrastructure work set to remain high, opportunities should abound. Atkins should also remain heavily involved in rail work. It wasn't affected - unlike blue-collar counterparts such as Jarvis and Balfour Beatty - when the track operator, Network Rail, decided to take contracting work back in-house. Another big opportunity comes from the London underground system. As part of the Metronet consortium, Atkins has a contract to operate part of the Tube's infrastructure. Despite a high-profile derailment last year, Atkins has told the City that it still expects Metronet to contribute profits of £12m-£13m this year. Metronet won't generate cash for Atkins in the early years but, over the project's 30-year life, management estimates the discounted sum of cash flows to be worth around £130m. That implies a very healthy return-on-equity of around 20 per cent. Even though the contract is supposed to be watertight, the risk - as with any public infrastructure work at present - is that the government may interfere at some point in the future and make the project less attractive. Given both the recovery and growth potential at Atkins, the shares look cheap on a multiple of 15 times Arbuthnot's forecast of underlying earnings for this year, and 13 times next year. They don't have a dividend yield to speak of, as Atkins cut its dividend when its problems first hit, but they do come with strong momentum behind them. Their steady climb shows no sign of abating. Buy. |
Posted at 21/1/2004 07:38 by tonyleongson mentioned in todays independant-------------------- In the market, small is beautiful Edited by Stephen Foley 21 January 2004 Shares in small companies have performed, on average, better than shares in large companies. That was true in spades last year, when the biggest rising FTSE index was the Fledgling, which measures the tiniest 450 shares on the main market. It rose 56.5 per cent in 2003, compared to 16.6 per cent by the FTSE All-Share. Similarly, over la longue durée. According to London Business School's latest analysis, out yesterday, the capital gains from the smallest 1,000 shares on the market over the past 50 years have been more than six times the rise in the All-Share. London Business School's report cautions that large company shares can outperform for long periods of time, as they did for most of the Nineties. But there are reasons for expecting further growth from the little acorns this year. The first is the current mood of the market, rewarding smaller, riskier companies. The return of the private punter is also helping. Valuations also seem appealing, with the price-earnings ratio on the small-cap about 11, compared to 16 on the FTSE 100, according to the London Business School's sponsor, ABN Amro. The trouble with the insight is that it is very difficult to gain exposure to small-caps as a class other than through highly selective active investment funds, whose performance can be holed below the waterline by a disaster or two. And small-caps, of course, have more than their fair share of companies on the financial ropes. It's all down to the stock picking, then, and this column tries to provide as much commentary on small-caps as on blue chips. And ABN Amro, too, has assembled its own "small is beautiful" portfolio. This mainly involves house stocks (and we'll skirt over Eidos, which had a profit warning yesterday). But it also highlights Uniq, the food group, where investors are urged to look through falling reported earnings to underlying growth; Anite, which should sell more software to the recovering telecoms and travel industry; and WS Atkins, now a maintenance contractor on the London Underground. |
Posted at 02/12/2003 14:31 by tonyleongson Atkins mentioned in Motley Fool-------------------- How To Catch A Falling Knife Market Comment By Stuart Watson You'll see this well-worn investment phrase all the time on our discussion boards. But is it good advice? The basic reasoning is simple. A share that is falling heavily is likely to be doing so for good reason. So investors should steer clear, at least until it stops falling. Sometimes there is an obvious reason for the fall, like BTG (LSE: BGC.L - news) 's (LSE: BGC) recent admission that its key product was facing delays. This led to its shares falling almost 60% in one day last month. Today, its shares have fallen back again, as the company revealed the delay could be as long as two years. At other times, share price falls appear to happen for no obvious reason. Deciding a course of action in these cases is far trickier. Do you wait for the company to confirm that nothing untoward is happening, or perhaps check on other companies in the sector to see if they are having difficulties? But regardless of the difficulties of individual investing decisions, what about the strategy as a whole? How do falling knives perform as a group? Contrary to the traditional investing wisdom, a recent study (pdf file) by The Brandes Institute has suggested catching falling knives can be worthwhile. They define a falling knife as a share that has fallen 60% or more in a twelve-month period and found that these shares tend to outperform their country's main index for the next two years. There are some caveats of course. The outperformance is mainly due to a small proportion of exceptional performers -- shares that double or more. WS Atkins (LSE: ATK.L - news) is a classic example. It topped our table of profit warnings for 2002. Yet, within twelve months, its shares had risen eight-fold. So picking the occasional falling knife is very much hit and miss. Unless luck is on your side, and you happen to select one of the big gainers, knife catching just isn't going to cut it. You need a selection of sickly shares to turn the odds in your favour. The researchers also found that sticking to larger companies and those with the lowest price to book ratio also improved your odds. Sounds a bit like value investing to me! |
Posted at 06/11/2003 10:49 by gsands It gets better and better! Now Barclays have been in for a top up!!Atkins (WS) PLC 6 November 2003 SCHEDULE 10 NOTIFICATION OF MAJOR INTERESTS IN SHARES 1) NAME OF COMPANY WS ATKINS PLC 2) NAME OF SHAREHOLDER HAVING A MAJOR INTEREST BARCLAYS PLC 3) Please state whether notification indicates that it is in respect of holding of the Shareholder named in 2 above or in respect of a non-beneficial interest or in the case of an individual holder if it is a holding of that person's spouse or children under the age of 18 SEE 2 ABOVE 4) Name of the registered holder(s) and, if more than one holder, the number of shares held by each of them. SEE BELOW 5) Number of shares/amount of stock acquired. NOT DISCLOSED 6) Percentage of issued Class NOT DISCLOSED 7) Number of shares/amount of stock disposed N/A 8) Percentage of issued Class N/A 9) Class of security ORDINARY SHARES OF 0.5 PENCE EACH 10) Date of transaction NOT DISCLOSED 11) Date company informed 5 NOVEMBER 2003 12) Total holding following this notification 3,108,327 13) Total percentage holding of issued class following this notification 3.01% 14) Any additional information SEE BELOW 15) Name of contact and telephone number for queries RICHARD WEBSTER 01372 752349 16) Name and signature of authorised company official responsible for making this notification Date of Notification ..... 6 NOVEMBER 2003 ................... Letter to W S Atkins dated 30 October 2003 Companies Act 1985 ('The Act') - Part VI I hereby inform you that as at 29 October 2003 Barclays PLC, through the legal entities listed on the attached schedule, has a notifiable interest in the capital of your Company of 3.01%. Details of this interest, together with a breakdown between registered holders (as required by Section 202(3) of the Act), are attached below. The issued capital of 103,260,422 is the latest figure available to us. From Barclays PLC SEDOL : 0060800 LEGAL ENTITY REPORT As at 29 October 2003 Barclays PLC, through the legal entities listed below, had a notifiable interest in 3,108,327 ORD GBPO.005 representing 3.01% of the issued share capital of 103,260,422 units. Legal Entity Holding Percentage Held Barclays Life Assurance Co Ltd 145,761 0.1412 Barclays Global Investors, N.A. 352,086 0.3410 Barclays Global Investors Ltd 2,592,478 2.5106 Barclays Private Bank and Trust Ltd 2,392 0.0023 Barclays Bank Trust Company Ltd 245 0.0002 Barclays Global Investors Australia Ltd 15,365 0.0149 Group Holding 3,108,327 3,0102 REGISTERED HOLDERS REPORT ATKINS WS SEDOL:0060800 As at 29 October 2003 Barclays PLC, through the registered holders listed below, had a notifiable interest in 3,108,327 ORD GBPO.005 representing 3.01% of the issued share capital of 103,260,422 units. Registered Holder Account Designation Holding ALMLUFTTL-18409-CHAS ASTEXMTTL-21359-CHAS ASUKEXTTL-20947-CHAS BARCLAYS TRUST CO AS EXEC/ADM 245 BLENTFUKQ-16344-CHAS BLENTPUKQ-16345-CHAS BLEQFDUKQ-16331-CHAS BLEQPTUEA-16341-CHAS BLEQPTUKQ-16341-CHAS BLLJKINTTL-16400-CHA CHASE MANHATTAN BANK 527191 234,711 CHASE MANHATTAN BANK 536747 61,223 CHASE MANHATTAN BANK 552942 7,563 CHATRKTTL-16376-CHAS INVESTORS BANK AND TRUST CO. 595966 14,081 JPMORGAN CHASE BANK 540186 15,365 NORTHERN TRUST BANK - BGI SEPA 581610 24,240 NORTHERN TRUST BANK - BGI SEPA 584069 10,268 Swan Nominees Limited 2,392 Total 3,108,327 END This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange |
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