Orders up for Serco
Outsourcing group Serco, which runs refuse local authority leisure centres across Shropshire, saw revenue rise from £1.49 billion to £1.51bn in the first half of this year.
For the six months to the end of June its operating profit was down from £64.8 million to £21.7m.
Order intake increased substantially to £2.4bn from £900m in the first half of 2016, including its largest ever contract at £1.5bn for Grafton prison in Australia. Together with £1.6bn booked in the second half of 2016, order intake over the last 12 months at £4bn is the largest since 2012.
Group chief executive Rupert Soames said: "Notwithstanding the well-flagged decline in profits compared with the first half of 2016, trading in the first half of 2017 keeps us on track to achieve our expectations for the full year."
"The most striking element is the order intake, which for two successive periods has been very strong, totalling some £4bn in the last 12 months, and we have succeeded in maintaining the pipeline at broadly similar levels despite strong order conversion. However, as we said in June, we remain sensibly cautious in the light of the political environment in several of our markets becoming markedly more unpredictable," he added.
