West Midlands-based international car components group Wagon has said that it expects to boost its order book by nearly a third this year after adding Porsche to its list of customers.
In addition to new and replacement contracts from existing customers, the company said it had also secured "significant" contracts with Iveco and Honeywell while winning its first contracts for some years from Porsche, the German sportscar manufacturer with a big stake in Volkswagen.
"Order intake in the year is expected to be 30 per cent above last year and continued to strengthen in the second half," Wagon said in a pre-close period trading statement to the London Stock Exchange. "The board expects this strong order intake will contribute to group revenues and profits from the 2009/10 financial year and onwards."
Before that, however, Wagon said it expects revenues, margins and volumes to suffer "materially" as a result in carmakers' schedules, model changeovers and lower demand for cars on the part of consumers.
Wagon also said yesterday that its largely euro-denominated debt "remains above expectations" because of exchange rate factors and a "material exceptional transaction cost" relating to its abortive bid for European components company ISE.
Wagon, which will publish its results for the 12 months to March 31 early in June, said that overall, volumes, revenue and operating performance had remained broadly in line with expectations.
However, reported pre-tax profits will be diluted by the impact of the ISE charge.
Wagon, whose corporate HQ is at Birmingham Business Park, has operations in the UK, France, the Czech Republic, Turkey and China.
It has recently laid off about 1,000 staff as part of a restructuring programme aimed at delivering £15 million of improvements to annual operating profit and increasing manufacturing investment.
First half profits excluding non-recurring items rose to £5.4 million from £200,000 for the same period the year before on revenue three per cent ahed at £323.6 million.
