Mears bought Morrison Facilities Services from Anglian Water Group for £24m in November. The company was loss-making and performing so badly that Mears fully expected contract losses. However, with restructuring now taking place, this has not happened, Mears says, and clients were now being won around.
In a trading statement this morning, the company said: “Mears was aware in the period leading up to completion of the acquisition that a number of Morrison contracts were encountering significant service delivery failures and poor client relationships. Mears is committed to investing in these long term opportunities and the primary focus since completion has been to put structure and process in place to deliver excellent customer service. The response from Morrison clients since the acquisition has been positive and no contract losses of any materiality have been experienced, which is ahead of management's acquisition plan.”
Chief executive David Miles said: "2012 has been a transformational year for the group. I am very encouraged by the progress made in integrating the Morrison acquisition and the early indications are encouraging.”
He added: "I am delighted that we continue to achieve high levels of service delivery and customer satisfaction. The quality of our service delivery continues to be our key differentiator and underpins our new contract bidding success in both our core growth sectors."
Mears said that its results for the full year to 31 December 2012 would be in line with management expectations and trading remained ‘solid’. New contract successes, together with the acquisition of Morrison, have increased the group's order book from £2.6bn to £3.8bn, with a bid pipeline in excess of £3.0bn.
The non-core M&E business, however, experienced difficult trading conditions, particularly in the final quarter, and is expected to show an operating loss for 2012.
Mears will announce its preliminary results for the year ended 31 December 2012 on 19 March 2013.
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