Amec Foster Wheeler sees revenue fall

Engineering and project management giant Amec Foster Wheeler saw revenues dip in the nine months to September.

The period saw the firm, which has operations across Cheshire, take in around £3.87bn, which represents a year-on-year decrease of 1.8%.

Amec Foster Wheeler’s chief executive, Samir Brikho, said: “Amec Foster Wheeler is a high quality and diversified business, and its financial performance remains relatively resilient, as the performance so far this year shows.

“However, we are not immune to the ongoing tough market conditions and we are managing the business on the assumption of an extended period of weakness.”

He added: “For more than a year - across many parts of our business - we have seen customers reducing capital expenditure and putting more pricing pressure on the supply chain. We see no sign of these trends changing.”

Now, the firm is working to deliver cost savings of $55m (around £36m) and expects to make savings of $180m (£120m), in addition to previously announced savings of $125m (£81m), over the course of the next two years.

Mr Brikho continued: “At our half year results, I said our priorities were to adapt to challenging markets and to stay lean and efficient. We have decided to intensify our actions. We have identified, and continue to seek, further cost savings. We are committed to increasing our focus on higher growth markets.

“In parts of our business we need to do better - so we are progressing plans to improve performance or exit those markets. We believe that taken together these actions will underpin our performance.”

He concluded: “In light of the ongoing market conditions, we are taking the prudent step of cutting our ordinary dividend payments by fifty per cent, starting with the final dividend for 2015.”

Last month, the company won a contract to carry out a large waste management study at Japan’s disaster-struck Fukushima Daiichi power station, in addition to revealing plans to establish a new £2m nuclear research facility near Warrington.

Company debt at the close of 2015 will sit at around £1.1bn.

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