08.06.2020

Speedy upbeat /CFO to depart

UK rental group Speedy has issued a relatively positive trading statement for the financial year to the end of March and announced that the group finance director Chris Morgan will leave the company at the end of July by mutual agreement. Morgan joined Speedy as in December 2015 as interim chief financial officer and was confirmed in the role the following March. See Interim CFO for Speedy
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Chris Morgan

The company has also written off all goodwill associated with the training business Geason, which it acquired for £9.3 million in December 2018 See Speedy acquires Geason Training due to a lack of performance and the fact that it is subject to a claim from a funding agency alleging poor financial controls and over payments of up to £2.6 million over a three year period from August 2017.

Finally the publication of its annual results – due out tomorrow – will now be postponed until June 23rd.

Starting with the trading update the company says that revenues in April were ahead of expectations although 35 percent lower than in the same quarter last year due to reduced activity levels and suspensions of hired equipment. In May activity levels steadily improved as lock down measures were eased and more contractors returned to work. As a result rental revenues for last week were just 17 percent lower than last year.

The company initially placed half of its UK/Ireland employees on furlough, but as of last week that was down to 1,200 or around a third of the workforce. Thanks to a strong year through March, government support during April and May, and strong cash collections in March, April and May the company has managed to reduce its net debt from £79.3 million at the end of March 2019 to £68 million as of the end of May.

Vertikal Comment

This is an interesting announcement from Speedy, overall it is extremely positive given the current environment. With trading shifting back towards normality and all the support available the company is in a good position to come out of the current crisis in pretty good shape and certainly in a better position than it was a few years back, when it went through a tough period.

It will be interesting to see the results, although the first half numbers for the period to the end of September will be a good deal more enlightening.