Weir first-half profit soars
Weir Group, which makes pumps and valves for moving minerals, oil and gas, said it expected more progress this year helped by acquisitions, as it posted an 85 percent rise in first-half profit.
First Great Western to invest £29 mln in service improvementsChief executive Mark Selway said on Tuesday he was confident Weir would achieve the current market consensus for 2008, which calls for a pretax profit before amortisation and exceptional items of 165.4 million pounds.
He also said Weir's balance sheet could support up to 300 million pounds of acquisitions, even after several recent deals.
Weir's continuing operations made a pretax profit before amortisation and exceptional items of 81.8 million pounds in the six months to end-June, on revenue up 46 percent to 632 million.
The interim dividend was raised 12 percent to 4.65 pence.
Weir, which has benefited from strong market conditions in the mining, oil and gas and power sectors, has three non-core businesses - a liquid gas unit, a foundry in Manchester, and a Canadian distributor - whose future it is considering.
Its shares, which have outperformed other London-listed engineers .FTASX2750 by 29 percent over the past 12 months, rose 2.4 percent to 924.5 pence in early trading to value the company at 1.92 billion pounds.
(Reporting by Dan Lalor; Editing by Paul Bolding)
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