Interim Management Statement

Quite upbeat statement this morning:

• Strong trading in its divisions, helped by its exposure to public sector projects. Overall, the group’s order book is expected to be ‘broadly in line’ with last year’s £12.8 billion.
• In the engineering sector, it has benefited from road projects in the UK and electricity programmes in the US.  Trading inline with expectations in Hong Kong and Dubai. In the United States, Balfour Beatty has won a five year contract for a transmission capital investment programme in New England for National Grid.
• The rail sector was weaker in the UK and Germany, as expected, while good progress was made in Italy and Malaysia.
• The firm has also seen progress in public private partnership projects involving schools and hospitals.  It confirmed this morning that it had reached financial close on the £200 million Southwark Schools for the Future Programme.  In May Balfour Beatty reached financial close on the £170 million Fife General Hospital Programme. Financial close on the M25 widening and maintenance programme is expected ‘shortly’.

Trading performance in 2009 has been in line with expectations, underpinned by our high-quality order book, continued infrastructure expenditure by our
customers, the benefit of acquisitions and our tight control of costs. Despite the generally reduced level of liquidity in the economy, our cash
position remains strong with average net cash in excess of GBP200 million for the first four months of 2009.

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