Havelock Europa Share Discussion Threads

[truthful tommy2] 20/6/2018 06:31

Same old story at Havelock.
Projects not making estimated margins, paying salaries for inept and very poor management, paying ridiculous expenses. Overhead Costs need to be emideately cut.

[neverforget] 20/6/2018 05:55

1 1/4% of the Company sold yesterday. AB selling out? Or maybe Godden before he gets pushed out. Word on the street is of big cost cutting to come.

[timnet] 19/6/2018 23:12

Which rats are leaving the ship?

[cvileservant] 19/6/2018 15:56

Wow - another 12.7% dive have KPMG just been asked to resubmit their homework on tis one?

[tomboyb] 19/6/2018 10:38

Clocktower -

the way I see it is that Havelock will need to be smaller and leaner -

Obviously contracts have to be profitable otherwise pointless -

Company is capped at almost ZERO anyway and it has 2 yrs left to sort itself out -

[clocktower] 19/6/2018 10:30

Its not completed orders you want to know about, it is new large scale PROFITABLE ones tomboyb. Was the completed contract even profitable or just one to keep the cash flow going?

[tomboyb] 19/6/2018 10:22

HAVELOCK
‏

@HavelockEuropa
12h12 hours ago
More HAVELOCK Retweeted hub North Scotland
Another incredible project completed by the team @hubNorthScot @balfourbeatty #workingtogether #teamwork #education #state-of-the-art

[tomboyb] 19/6/2018 10:21

HAVELOCK
‏

@HavelockEuropa
11h11 hours ago
More
The team have been very busy delivering some great projects in South Wales and were awarded joint 1st in the monthly Health and Safety award competition at Margam in Port Talbot for Bouygues @BouyguesUK Well done to all those involved #teamwork #workingtogther #Education #success

[cvileservant] 18/6/2018 09:21

Perhaps Charlotte Street Partners are going to step in with a magic fix on the back of Andrew Wilson's magic fix for the Scottish economy! or is that just another bean adding to the somewhat fruity smell around this firm?

[cvileservant] 15/6/2018 09:55

I can't see were the opportunities lie, banks closing at 60 branches per week, high street rationalising drastically to be replaced with online shopping, and local authorities moving to super-schools (for supersized pupils) or combined campus's, thus reducing desk numbers. If theres survival here, it its going to be a greatly reduced beast, and as a shadow of its former financial self. Until it ditches more burden of overhead, it's going to be fighting against smaller more agile business units with less overheads to cover on tendering. Looking to Australasia is fine, but does that mean double transport on goods from China to Kirkcaldy to be worked on before shipping out again, or more non productive dormancy for the Kirkcaldy factory to be absorbed into the tender price?

[tomboyb] 14/6/2018 15:38

a £1mill cap -

They have 2 years max by the looks of it to sort this sh*t out -

[tomboyb] 11/6/2018 14:18

Well -

Havelock has 2 years to sort this out -

Get the 19% holder to help get this running - Its capped at virtually nothing anyway

[neverforget] 11/6/2018 13:41

nice to see Ritchie now ceo of the window company.

[cvileservant] 05/6/2018 14:20

Assume it's anticipation about House of Fraser that's today's slide ; any interest from Dobbies, Mr. Horlicks?, or does your dad not works their?

[clocktower] 05/6/2018 12:19

They need to put the board of directors on a No Profit, No pay Deal to secure the company`s future imo.

AB might be better to see the company go down the drain and to a deal with the liquidators, that would clean the board out along with any other dead wood that has helped drag the business down.

[tomboyb] 03/6/2018 11:03

Havelock gets two years to stage recovery after tough year

THE MANAGEMENT of Fife fit-out firm Havelock Europa has said it has two years to turn the firm around to in order for it to continue operating as a going concern.

In its latest financial results, which were released yesterday after a four-week delay, the firm reported that its turnover fell by 12.5 per cent to £53.2m in the year to December 2017 while it went from making a marginal pre-tax profit of £200,000 to posting a loss of £5.3 million.

Noting that the results represented “one of the worst performances in Havelock’s history”, chairman Ian Godden said the firm had been “impacted by a lower opening order book brought forward from 2016, changes to the sales mix, lower Government spending on schools, weaker fixed cost coverage and serious issues with [a new enterprise resource planning] system”.

While Mr Godden said the firm had been further held back “by a lack of finance” in the latter part of the year, he added that £8m of loans secured from Bank of Scotland and Scottish Government development agency Scottish Enterprise earlier this year would allow the firm to put its turnaround plan in place.

However, as Bank of Scotland’s £5m loan expires in March 2020 while repayments on the £3m Scottish Enterprise loan are scheduled to begin in November of that year, the firm noted that the turnaround will have to be bearing fruit by that point.

“The group needs to turn around its financial performance over the next two years in order to stay within the various covenants on its debt during this period and to be in a position to roll over or refinance the facility and possibly the Scottish Enterprise loan, which incurs interest at a significant rate,” the firm said in its accounts.

In addition to repaying its debt, Havelock will see the amount of cash it has to contribute to its defined benefit pension scheme - whose deficit increased from £11.4m to £11.8m last year - more than double between this year and 2022.


Read more: Havelock Europa unveils plan for hitting £100m turnover target

This year the firm will pay £700,000 into the scheme, which has been closed to new members and future accruals for a number of years. The figure will rise to £1.5m from 2022.

In order to meet its commitments the firm is aiming to increase turnover by 25% by 2020 while also cutting its costs.

Chief executive Shaun Ormrod, who was tasked with turning the business around when he was brought in to replace David Ritchie last September, said the firm had already begun scaling back its cost base.

Read more: Pensions issue sees Havelock delay release of 2017 results

“The company has reduced headcount in 2017 by over 13%, shut offices, replaced underperforming commercial management, slimmed the management team and undertaken a major review of inventory,” he said.

The firm is also consulting on moving its remaining staff to an annualised-hours working model, which it is understood would reduce its costs by £1.6m by 2019.

While a note to the accounts said the firm’s directors “are satisfied that it is most likely that the business will be successfully turned around within the trajectory necessary to keep within the debt covenants”, the firm also noted that “a modest shortfall in the forecast revenue will result in a breach of covenants”.

Meanwhile, the firm's Annual Report revealed that Mr Ritchie's total remuneration for 2017, which included a payment for loss of office, was £211,000. In the previous year his total package was £204,000.

[cvileservant] 01/6/2018 14:12

Concerns about the writing off old or slow moving stock - £1m and another defective electronic management system - bring's back memories of the 2009/2010 £5m write off when changing and blending the system to Comis? - is it just IT errors, or nobody stress testing the new systems aggressively, and leaving the staff to bludgeon through rather than soft start training? Or really cynically, another £1m fudge away? and a SMT unable to learn from previous lessons

[arthur_lame_stocks] 01/6/2018 09:11

This company looks to be in dire straights without a quick and significant improvement in trading. Huge losses on reducing turnover, negative working capital, massive deficit on the balance sheet. How much worse can it get? I hope Andrew Burgess has found a good man to shake this up a bit otherwise his investment looks like toast.

[steak1] 31/5/2018 23:41

The more you look at at the results the more questions you have to ask
Cash Flow deteriorated by £970,000 but there was a loss before tax of £5,300,000 how is this loss being financed ?

It may be its being financed by a huge increase in trade payables this figure was £3,146,000 in 2016 and has increased to £6,548,000 - Why as the amount of money owed to suppliers more than doubled, when Turnover is down 12.5% and Debtors are almost the same as the prior year ? There was £2,100,000 of deferred supplier payments. If this has happened Debt could be £5,400,000 in January 2018 - remember debt jumped by to £2,050,000 from December 2016 to January 2017

The Debt figure for the the first 5 months of 2017 increased from £4,750,000 to £6,000,000 in May

If the same pattern is repeated this year the Debt could be £6,650,000 today if you add to that the £125,000 of additional finance costs for the last 3 months & the traditional losses for the first half of the year, the additional pension contributions of £290,000, then this company needs much more money than the £8,000,000 banking facilities it has.

Regarding the Chief Executives statement that EBITDA is up 20% on the prior year for the first 4 months, If that good work continues to the end of June it will result in Gross Profit increasing from £1,054,000 to £1,264,800 an improvement of £210,800 - remember the loss for the first half of 2016 was £2,400,000

In the going concern statement it says :In particular a modest shortfall in the forecast revenue will result in a breach of covenants:

This look to me like a company with many problems .

[savvysurveyor] 31/5/2018 19:04

These terrible results are the true legacy of David Ritchie and Ciaran Kennedy

[mesquida] 31/5/2018 17:06

Judging by the 100k sale at 3p immediately after my purchase it looks as though the marketmaker knows who to bid for stock. Somebody clearly wants out, but herein lies the opportunity for those of us who think that it can be turned around.

[mesquida] 31/5/2018 17:02

Tomboy, I use Alliance Trust, as a result of them taking over Stocktrade several years ago.