Forward looking and dedication will make "Jarvis" a name to remember. IMO

i can see light @ the end of the tunnel............i see two men with clip boards and a piece of paper "CREDITORS NOTICE" AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

moving back up again

Edmond Jackson: Jarvis attracts speculators in spite of losses
Published: 16:00 Wednesday 29 December 2004
By: Edmond Jackson

The period between Christmas and New Year is a classic one for news companies would prefer to hide - and perhaps Jarvis is setting a record among smaller companies by declaring a 283 million loss.

Yet the shares (JRVS) have been attracting buyers with the price up 7p to 25p/25.25p, capitalising the facilities management group at about 36 million. In its financial year to March, the facilities management group reported turnover above 1 billion.

Steven Norris, chairman, makes various bullish assertions in his statement, though I am mindful this is a company where shareholders desperately need some encouragement. Jarvis shares are showing the bounce that usually happens when a financially stretched company affirms viability. But long-term investors need grounds to anticipate a worthwhile business being honed out of a restructuring.

Jarvis had already warned the market about this news, via trading statements in July and November. At the start of December the shares were at an all-time low of 10.5p. So any silver lining to the black cloud triggers a price rise, with enough sellers already out. Chairman Steven Norris asserts that these results represent the nadir of the groups fortunes.

As you might expect with losses on this scale, some 240 million of these are exceptional write-downs (goodwill in the roads business, construction losses, certain debtors and work in progress). Norris claims that in the last few weeks the group has made outstanding progress with its business plan to stabilise the groups finances and reduce indebtedness.

Norris reiterates this extremely good progress and perhaps that is how it appears to management, which is fire fighting. Investors still have to appraise a like for like group operating loss of 44.5 million, relative to a profit of 31.7 million.

The share price rise is justified by Jarvis establishing a firmer financial footing such as selling its interest in Tube Lines for 146.8 million; agreeing 105 million of funding to complete construction contracts; and agreeing a refinancing until 27 March 2006 via additional bond facilities.

Looking forward, what concerns me is the modest information (as yet) to assess the ongoing businesses. This is understandable at an early stage in the recovery process. We are told of cost cutting that should yield annualised savings of 50 million and the new core businesses of rail, road and plant operations have been re-designed under a new organisational structure, and will be leaner and more cash generative than in the past. But despite this progress more work needs to be done in many areas to re-establish and enhance our reputation in our core markets.

It is a classic hurdle to overcome, how customer relations will have been affected by adverse publicity. Investors are challenged to figure how this may be resolved in future turnover.

That a new chief executive, Alan Lovell, was appointed in October was indeed vitally important and Alan has an outstanding record of achievement having undertaken restructuring and recovery work in the most exacting situations. Norris is similarly upbeat about promotions as chief operating officer and finance director.

The operations review reads well, but when it comes to the nub issue Norris cannot yet affirm the prospect of a profitable business, he ensures the caveat that we will be doing everything in our power to recreate a profitable efficient business

I am inclined to follow how the ongoing group performs, rather than buy on todays rise. Jarvis is a recovery share in the making, though its a speculative leap as to how it shapes up



http://www.citywire.co.uk/News/NewsArticle.aspx?VersionID=71023&MenuKey=News.Home&NewsPage=3

Jarvis claims cash crisis is over

Mark Milner
Thursday December 30, 2004
The Guardian

Jarvis chief executive Alan Lovell yesterday declared the company's cash crisis over despite a 283m half-time loss swollen by huge write-offs.
Following the deal to sell its 33% stake in Tube Lines on Christmas Eve, Jarvis has now reached agreement to cap its exposure to 14 stalled public finance initiative projects and to a refinancing package which will run until March 2006.

"Capping the 14 construction contracts, extending the banking arrangements - provided shareholders approved the Tube Lines sale then, yes, the cash crisis is over," Mr Lovell said.

Jarvis shares, which have been hit by rain derailments on track maintained by the company and then by problems on PFI contracts, responded by climbing 105% to 37p.

Chairman Steven Norris acknowledged that the first half figures for the six months to the end of September marked the "nadir" of the group's fortunes. But he said the recent agreements allowed Jarvis "to draw a line under the past."

Jarvis said it had written off some 240m in the first half, mainly against the roads business, construction contracts and old debts while operating losses amounted to 44.5m.

The sale of the Tube Lines stake, which will provide a 5.6m fee for Transport for London, to Spain's Grupo Ferrovial is worth almost 147m while other assets disposals will bring in another 50m.

Mr Lovell, who will pick up a 450,000 bonus if he succeeds in turning the company round, said he was confident that shareholders would back the Tube Lines deal when they vote on it on January 10. Jarvis has already warned that without the Tube Lines cash it would struggle to survive.

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Yesterday the company said it had reached agreement in principle under which it will make a contribution to a 105m package that will allow work to restart on the stalled PFI contracts. Jarvis is expected to complete nine of the contracts itself and pass five on to other companies.

The reshaped Jarvis will focus on three core operations - rail, road and plant operations, with a turnover of about 500m. After the disposal programme the group will have debts of around 240m.

Mr Lovell said there were three ways Jarvis could reduce its debt - by bringing in a strategic investor, a merger or a debt for equity swap - but added that there was no urgency in making a choice.

The priority was to demonstrate that the new-look Jarvis was a viable, profitable entity. The company had already cut around 20m in costs and was looking to achieve another 30m in savings.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1380777,00.html

'I never expected it to be as bad as it was'
(Filed: 02/01/2005)


Steven Norris tells Edward Simpkins how Jarvis was rescued from the brink of collapse

Steven Norris says his worst hour in a roller-coaster of a year as chairman of Jarvis came last June when it looked as though the beleaguered construction and rail services group might go bust. The timing could not have been worse, coming just days before Norris was due to contest the London mayoral election as the Conservative candidate.


Steven Norris: 'I've been
very hands-on'
In the event Norris lost the election, without, he claims, the help of Jarvis, and the company was given a year's stay of execution following a bout of intensive negotiations with its bankers. Norris says the refinancing deal, which was unveiled just after the election result, was the high point of his turbulent year at Jarvis.

With the agreement of the company's long-suffering lenders, disaster was averted and Jarvis survived to undergo a period of intense restructuring. This culminated in the sale on Christmas Eve of its biggest asset, a stake in Tube Lines, the company that runs a third of the London Underground, for 147m to Spain's Ferrovial and a deal to extend its banking facilities for a further year.

Last week Jarvis announced a record loss of 283m, made up largely of writedowns on businesses that the company is quitting, such as construction, as the group tried to draw a final line under its troubled recent history.

So far investors have bought into the argument of Alan Lovell, the restructuring expert brought in by Norris as chief executive two months ago, that Jarvis has a viable future as a rail renewals, plant hire and roads business, albeit a heavily indebted one.

The share price jumped by more than 50 per cent on the results announcement as Lovell admitted that Jarvis was looking for a big equity investor to take a stake or to agree a debt for equity swap with its banks. Although the company will have an expected 240m of debt on its balance sheet by its year end in March, a strategic deal or debt agreement should ensure that the company is not about to go bust.

It is hard not to feel some respect for Norris for taking the helm of a company that has been in crisis for much of the past three years. Jarvis has been blighted by three profits warnings in a year and cost overruns in key projects.

Jarvis's financial problems are very much of its own making and it is unlikely that much sympathy will be felt by its shareholders or the families of the seven people killed in the Potters Bar rail crash in 2002, which was caused by faulty points on a section of track maintained by Jarvis. But there is no denying that Norris has steered Jarvis back from the brink of collapse.

"I never expected the position to be as bad as it was, but I knew when I took it on that it was going to be tough and I knew it was going to be a lot of work," Norris says, pointing out that as the last man standing he was practically obliged to take on the chairman's job. It is a job that has been attended by so much ill fortune that it almost looks cursed.

In August 2002, Colin Skellett, the chairman of Wessex Water, resigned the chairmanship at Jarvis after the City of London Police fraud squad arrested him over allegations that he had taken a 1m bribe to influence the sale of the water company to a Malaysian conglomerate.

"We had lost two chairmen in very short order," Norris says. "Colin was, of course, never charged. He was cleared. It was patently obvious to anyone who knew him that he was absolutely beyond reproach, and he was also an absolutely excellent chairman, but the shareholders demanded his resignation."

Then nine months later Skellett's successor, Lord McGowan, the former senior partner of Panmure described by Norris as a "wise and able chairman", died of cancer.

"That left us very much denuded in terms of non-executives, and because Paris Moayedi was due to retire as chief executive, he took on the job temporarily and we promoted the then chief operating officer, Kevin Hyde, to CEO because that had been the planned succession."

However, it was about then that the cracks began to appear.

"It became clear when our September half-year results were produced in November 2003 that something was going seriously wrong in terms of cash," Norris says. "The company was continuing to report profits steaming ahead as late as September 2003 but it was obvious that there was a massive disconnection between profits on the one hand and the haemorrhaging of cash on the other."

That discovery led to Norris taking over as chairman.

"What that accelerated was the departure of a number of senior executives, and the retirement of Paris Moayedi certainly took place as planned," he says.

Moayedi, who became chief executive in 1994, was credited with turning a small and unremarkable construction company into what became for a time the UK's largest construction group.

But Norris says that in his opinion the culture Moayedi created at Jarvis allowed problems to grow unnoticed by senior staff. "I think there was far too much of a culture which had developed in the mercurial, entrepreneurial Moayedi years," Norris says. "It is impossible to ignore the influence of Paris Moayedi on Jarvis right the way through to 2003, which was: `Don't bring me bad news, don't bring me problems, bring me solutions.' "

Norris's conclusion is that this resulted in "creditor stretch" - in plain language Jarvis was not paying its bills and contractors started to walk off-site.

"When we started to say to managers 'Please don't tell me what you think I want to hear, tell me what the exact position is', it became plain that we were effectively running out of cash and that unless we had some emergency cash in the business we would have to declare the company insolvent."

Norris says this was when the hard work really started.

"That was March 2004 and from very shortly after our first profits warning in February I was involved with the banks in putting together the standstill arrangements and the extension of new money to the company which was vitally necessary."

So does Norris have any regrets? "I've been very hands on," he says. "There have been periods of time when the description 'non-executive' has been frankly laughable, as was the equally inappropriate description 'part time'. It has been intense but I've enjoyed it."




http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml;sessionid=RMMUEJBPYSUVJQFIQMGCNAGAVCBQUJVC?xml=/money/2005/01/02/ccjarv02.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2005/01/02/ixcoms.html&menuId=242&_requestid=48005

up 12%. Recovery play for 2005

Jarvis PLC
04 January 2005


SCHEDULE 10

NOTIFICATION OF MAJOR INTERESTS IN SHARES

1. Name of company

Jarvis plc

2. Name of shareholder having a major interest

Legal & General Group PLC and/or subsidiaries.

3. Please state whether notification indicates that it is in respect of holding
of the shareholder named in 2 above or in respect of a non-beneficial interest
or in the case of an individual holder if it is a holding of that person's
spouse or children under the age of 18

Not disclosed

4. Name of the registered holder(s) and, if more than one holder, the number of
shares held by each of them

Not disclosed

5. Number of shares / amount of stock acquired

N/A

6. Percentage of issued class

N/A

7. Number of shares / amount of stock disposed

Not disclosed

8. Percentage of issued class

Not disclosed

9. Class of security

Ordinary 5p

10. Date of transaction

Not disclosed

11. Date company informed

30 December 2004

12. Total holding following this notification

Not disclosed

13. Total percentage holding of issued class following this notification

Not disclosed

14. Any additional information

The Legal & General Group PLC and/or its subsidiaries no longer have a
disclosable interest.

15. Name of contact and telephone number for queries

M L Mellor 020 7017 8140

16. Name and signature of authorised company official responsible for making
this notification

M L Mellor

Date of notification

04 January 2005

i see they lost faith then!

that's it...time to get out

why?

im going 2wait till 10th i still got faith and i lost learly half my dosh already but im gona stay in

still holding also. the rumour mill will begin to turn soon im sure.

already lost 4k, will be a really surprise if it goes up to 35p again. ..already lost faith

not far behind you but it aint worth cashing in now IMO just incase

babykitcat I agree it all depends on the vibes on the day (EGM).

Independent dated 06/01/05

* Alan Lovell, Jarviss new chief executive, reckons that Jarvis can escape its fate and be rescued. At Costain he found a buyer to put up new equity, maybe he can find one for Jarvis too

quids in if he does

i see some people do have faith in the old girl yet

news snippets rather than just up 10%etc cheers...

Jarvis has a strong future, we will be looking around 2 a share by end of this year.