Morson’s core business proves ‘resilient’

MORSON Group said that trading within its core business of providing temporary engineering staff had proved “more resilient than anticipated” in 2011, particularly within the last few months of the year.

However, the higher-margin business of providing permanent and spot recruitment staff to companies in its aerospace, defence, rail, oil & gas and nuclear markets had not been as high as anticipated, meaning that overall trading for the year is likely to be “in line with expectations”.

The company also said that the its design operation, Morson Projects, which provides outsourced staff for technical projects, had been “impacted negatively by cost and timing overruns on certain large, fixed-price contracts”.

“The board believes that the trading environment in the UK for Morson will remain challenging in 2012,” the company said. “The visibility of revenues in Morson’s core temporary recruitment activity remains good relative to other recruitment businesses. However, as in prior periods the year end outturn will be dependent on the successful conclusion of a number of major contract renewals.”

It said that it continued to look at potential deals which would bring it into new countries and new sectors, though, adding that it remained confident of its ability “to deliver growth in the medium and long term”.