Engineers Clarke pegs profits amid margins pressure

An electrical engineering firm with offices around the UK forecast profits at the lower end of expectations today.

T Clarke reported encouraging levels of enquiries in recent weeks but said actual trading remained tough with margins still under pressure within a competitive market.

It maintained hopes for a revival in 2006 but said profits for the last year would be at the lower end of the market’s range of £8.3m (€12.1m) to £8.9m (€13m).

The company operates 13 separately-branded businesses around the UK and employs more than 750 staff, including at sites in Leeds, Preston, Bristol, Birmingham and Peterborough.

In the past it has wired the new London Stock Exchange building, the London Eye and HSBC’s Canary Wharf offices.

Clarke said today that its order book stood at £160m (€234m) and consisted of a “better mix and quality” of work than in 2005.

In the next 12 months the London-based firm will be setting up services such as CCTV cameras, electrical generators and communications equipment at the White City Shopping Centre in West London, the London offices of legal firm Allen & Overy and the Grand Arcade shopping precinct in Cambridge.

It said: “Whilst there will be some continuing drag on margins, the board believes this will be a short term factor and that market conditions are set to improve markedly during the year.

“The group therefore expects that an improving performance will manifest itself in the second half of 2006 and in 2007.”