Hampson becomes ‘global leader’

For the six months ended 30 September, Hampson reported a 45% increase in revenue, up from £76.3 million last time to £110.5 million, while pre-tax profit rose 149% from £5 million to £12.5 million. What it described as “a strategic push into tooling” positioned it well to limit exposure to any cyclical downturn in commercial aircraft build rates and record tooling ordersmeant it was expanding its capacity to meet demand. Significant new contract wins in composite components Chairman Chris Geoghegan said: "In these challenging economic times, I am pleased to report another set of robust results that highlight the strength of our business model and the success of our clearly-focussed strategy to push into high-growth, high-margin aerospace composites and tooling. The contribution that our most recent acquisitions, Odyssey and GTS, have made to the Group in the period since we have bought them is particularly pleasing, being earnings accretive and ahead of our expectations. "The recent investments we have made in composites, and particularly tooling have created a better balance within the Group between the aerospace production build cycle and the development and launch phases of aircraft programmes. Consequently the increased scale of the Group coupled with the spread of revenue sources has significantly reduced our exposure to any single contract downturn or to any cyclicality of the aerospace sector. This leaves the Group well placed to continue to generate long term profitable growth."