Vp shows resilience

7 December 2020

Not surprisingly, Vp’s interim results announced today for the six months ended 30 September 2020 show revenue impacted by the pandemic.

Revenues reduced by 24% to £142.1m (2020: £186.6m) and profit before tax, amortisation and exceptional items was £8.6m (2020: £25.9m), with exceptional costs of £13m (2020: £0.7m). This resulted in a pre-tax loss of £6.0m (2020: profit of £23.4m).

Chairman Jeremy Pilkington says that trading in the UK division has continued to improve as the half year progressed and by the end of October monthly revenues had been restored to 89% of prior year levels. There have been 150 redundancies and 23 Group locations have been merged or closed since the virus outbreak.

“The recovery has been most pronounced in our MEP, Torrent and TPA (UK and Europe) divisions,” he says. “ESS Safeforce (survey and safety rental) has also enjoyed a good recovery. The Brandon Hire Station business, more dependent on the general construction market, has been slower to rebound but has seen a sustained revenue improvement as the branch network fully re‐opened from August onwards.”

Brandon Hire Station currently operates from 162 branches nationwide.

As industry watchers will know, back on 9 April 2019 the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced that it was investigating three businesses within the temporary groundworks sector of suspected anti‐competitive behaviour, which included a part of Vp’s excavation support systems business, Groundforce Shorco.

Previous accounts included a provision of £4.5m in respect of this. However, Vp reports that, as a result of information recently received from the CMA, it has allocated an additional £10.87m, resulting in a total provision of £15.37m. The process is ongoing.