Would anyone know why there has been such a large number of shares sold and no buying? Is there something we are not aware of?

It looks like your faith is paying off!

skinny, hope so but I am due a long service award for my faith! LOL

Nice sustained and sustainable rise. I've been in since 220 and I reckon these will go a lot, lot higher as the economy recovers. Solid company, solid balance sheet. I just wish they would do something about the yield - and I don't mean halving the share price either. A good outlook and a decent divi increase with next months results should see us clear 300p.

Final Results

Highlights

· Underlying operating profit2 up 4% to £25.1 million (2011: £24.1 million)

· Increase of 16% in adjusted profit before tax3 to £29.5 million (2011: £25.5 million)

· Adjusted basic earnings per share3 up 33% to 41.4 pence (2011: 31.1 pence), reflecting increased profits and a non-recurring tax timing benefit

· £105.7 million year-end net cash balance (2011: £140.1 million) and average month-end cash balance of £103.4 million (2011: £130.4 million)

· High quality forward order book of £2.4 billion, in excess of 90% from repeat orders including new awards and extensions to existing contracts (2011: £2.5 billion)

· Increase to over £700 million of revenue secured for 2013 as at 31 December 2012 (2011: over £650 million secured for 2012)

· Recommended increase in final dividend for the sixth successive year, taking the total for the year to 10.75 pence, a 7.5% increase on the prior year

Super set of figures, skinny.

Especially now they are correct! :-)

Recommended all-share merger

Recommended all-share merger
of Costain Group PLC and May Gurney Integrated Services plc

Highlights

· The Boards of Costain Group PLC ('Costain') and May Gurney Integrated Services plc ('May Gurney') are pleased to announce that they have reached agreement on the terms of a recommended all-share merger of Costain and May Gurney, which is to be implemented by way of a scheme of arrangement of May Gurney pursuant to which Costain will acquire the entire issued and to be issued ordinary share capital of May Gurney.

· Upon the Merger becoming effective, Costain, whose shares will continue to have a premium listing and to be traded on the London Stock Exchange's Main Market for listed securities, will be renamed 'Costain May Gurney PLC'.

· Each May Gurney Shareholder will receive 0.8275 New Costain Shares for every Scheme Share held, resulting in Costain Shareholders holding approximately 53% and May Gurney Shareholders holding approximately 47% of the issued share capital of Costain at the time the Merger becomes effective.

· The Merger will bring together two businesses with complementary service offerings to create one of the UK's leading integrated services providers to the rail, highways, water, waste, airports, hydrocarbons, power, nuclear, local government and fleet management sectors.

· The Boards of Costain and May Gurney believe that the Combined Group will have:

− a focus on delivering innovative and cost-effective solutions to address essential national needs in the sectors in which Costain and May Gurney operate;

− a larger addressable market, with a combined client base across the private sector, central and local government and regulated industries;

− an enhanced range of capabilities to meet customers' changing demands;

− the ability to benefit from the respective strengths of the Costain and May Gurney brands, which will continue to be used as required by customers;

− greater financial strength and scale, increasing the opportunity to bid for larger, more complex and multi-disciplinary contracts;

− the opportunity to leverage the best talent of the Costain Group and the May Gurney Group;

− significant earnings visibility underpinned by long term contracts and a combined order book of approximately £3.9 billion; and

− combined revenues of approximately £1.6 billion per annum.

· Based on its preliminary analysis, the Board of Costain believes that the Combined Group should be able to achieve recurring annual pre-tax cost synergies of approximately £10 million as a result of the Merger, primarily through savings stemming from the consolidation of corporate functions and shared services, with approximately £7.5 million expected to be realised in the financial year ending 31 December 2014 and the full £10 million in the financial year ending 31 December 2015.

· Post synergies, the Costain Directors expect the Merger to be double digit earnings enhancing[1] for Costain for the financial year ending 31 December 2014.[2]

1 Before amortisation of acquired intangibles, employment-related deferred consideration and integration costs.

2 Neither this statement nor the statements in the preceding paragraph relating to cost synergies are intended as profit forecasts. They should not be interpreted to mean that earnings per Costain Share or May Gurney Share for the current or future financial years would necessarily match or exceed the historical published earnings per Costain Share or May Gurney Share.

· The Combined Group will have a proven management team led by the current Costain CEO, Andrew Wyllie, as the Combined Group CEO and the current Costain Finance Director, Tony Bickerstaff, as the Combined Group Finance Director.

· David Allvey will be the Chairman of the Combined Group and Baroness Margaret Ford will be the Deputy Chairman. Following the Merger becoming effective, the Board of Costain will include all of the current Non-executive Directors of Costain and May Gurney, and Ishbel Macpherson, currently the Senior Independent Director of May Gurney, will be the Senior Independent Director of the Combined Group.

· The Combined Group's headquarters and registered office will be located at Costain's office in Maidenhead. May Gurney's office in Trowse in Norfolk will be retained as a shared services centre and the operational office for the Combined Group's hub in East Anglia.

· May Gurney intends to declare a second interim dividend of 5.6 pence per May Gurney Share in lieu of a final dividend for the year ending 31 March 2013. This dividend, which will be conditional upon the Merger becoming effective, will be paid after the Effective Date to May Gurney Shareholders on the register of members at the Scheme Record Time.

· On 6 March 2013 the Board of Costain announced that it was recommending, subject to Costain Shareholder approval, a final dividend of 7.25 pence per Costain Share in respect of the financial year ended 31 December 2012. If approved, the final dividend will be paid on 24 May 2013 to Costain Shareholders on the register of members as at the close of business on 19 April 2013. The New Costain Shares to be issued pursuant to the Merger will not carry any entitlement to the Costain final dividend in respect of the financial year ended 31 December 2012.

· The Merger is conditional on, amongst other things, the approval of Costain Shareholders and May Gurney Shareholders.

I sold out today Skinny. I got 303p which is a handsome profit on my purchase price of 223p in less than a year. I am taking a long hard look at CLLN as a replacement. Any talk of a bidding war for MAYG will have a negative effect on COST and absorb a lot of management time, even if they prove successful.

I've not been in COST for a while, but much like you - I would have bailed 1st thing.

CLLN has been on my watch for some time and looks interesting atm, my only sector play (so far) has been ISG - which suffers from a thin book a lot of the time.

Costain joint ventures win two Crossrail contracts

Costain, one of the UK's leading tier one engineering solutions providers, is pleased to announce that ATC ('ATC'), its Joint Venture with Alstom and TSO, has been awarded a contract worth approximately £300m to design, fit-out and commission the railway systems in Crossrail's tunnel network.

Under the contract, ATC will design and install track, overhead lines and mechanical and electrical equipment to fit out the 21km of twin tunnels currently being bored under the streets of London.

Design work will commence immediately, with the fit-out works starting in 2014, and will be carried out within the entire tunnelled and surface sections of the Crossrail route between Royal Oak, Pudding Mill Lane and Plumstead Portals.

Costain is also pleased to announce that in Joint Venture with Alstom it has been awarded the £15m contract for the design, construction and commissioning of the system that will provide traction power for the trains in the central tunnelled section of the Crossrail scheme.

Work will involve the construction of several auto-transformer stations and a feeder station site at Pudding Mill Lane to provide a 25 kV supply to the overhead line equipment that will power the new Crossrail trains. Costain is also constructing for National Grid the new cable tunnels to provide power to the other Crossrail feeder station at Kensal Green.

Crossrail will open in 2018. The Crossrail route will pass through 37 stations and will increase London's rail-based transport network capacity by 10 per cent. An estimated 200 million people will travel on Crossrail each year.

The market once again seem unmoved by a contract announcement.
£300mill is a lot of money but there does appear to be a lot of work to be done and three companies to share the rewards.
I wish they could give us some indication as to what will be left on the bottom line, maybe then the market would be more enthusiastic.

Interim Management Statement

Update

Following its good performance in 2012, the Group has had a strong start to the current year and is performing in line with the Board's expectations.

Costain is continuing to secure new work from major blue-chip customers who are investing billions of pounds in capital, operations and maintenance contracts and who require increasingly innovative solutions to their complex requirements.

Costain's success in identifying, developing and implementing innovative solutions to meet those customer requirements is demonstrated in the following examples of new work won since the start of the year:

- In anticipation of Network Rail's £9.4 billion investment in electrifying Britain's railways, Costain established a joint venture to develop a range of innovative solutions that would directly meet the customer's requirements. As a result, the Group announced that it had won the West Coast Power Supply Upgrade contract, its first contract as part of a circa £300 million investment by Network Rail in power upgrade.

- As a consequence of an intense focus on understanding the customer's specific needs, the Group secured, in joint venture, a further four contracts from Crossrail. The latest awards include the very important circa. £300m contract to design, fit-out and commission the railway systems across Crossrail's tunnel network.

- By implementing new service attributes, innovation and performance enhancement into an existing contract, the Group was recently awarded by the Highways Agency a two-year extension to its Managing Agent Contractor Area 7 maintenance contract.

- Following the successful completion earlier this year of the engineering design, procurement and construction management at Centrica's Easington Gas Terminal, enabling the production of gas from the York field in the Southern North Sea, we have received a repeat order from Centrica for the front end engineering design (FEED) at the Barrow terminals which service the East Irish Sea gas fields.


Order book

As a result of new contract awards and extensions the Group's quality forward order book has increased to £2.5 billion (31 December 2012: £2.4 billion), of which over 90% is repeat orders.

In addition, the Group has also increased its preferred bidder position to over £500 million (31 December 2012: over £400m).

To date, over £800 million of revenue has been secured for 2013.

The overall level of tendering activity across the Group's targeted markets remains high.

Financial position

The Group continues to benefit from a robust financial position with a strong net cash position.

In its full-year results announcement the Group highlighted that net cash would trend lower as the Group benefits from its increased emphasis on support service related activities and on customers who increasingly utilise a target cost based form of contract, together with changing industry cash flow profiles.

Proposed all-share merger with May Gurney Integrated Services plc ('May Gurney')

The Boards of Costain and May Gurney announced on 26 March 2013 that they had reached agreement on the terms of a recommended all-share merger of Costain and May Gurney (the 'Proposed Merger').

On 24 April 2013, the Boards of Kier Group plc ('Kier') and May Gurney announced that they had reached agreement on the terms of a recommended offer for May Gurney by Kier (the 'Kier Offer'). At the time of such announcement, the value of the Kier Offer represented a premium of approximately 35 per cent. to the then value of the Proposed Merger.

On 25 April 2013, Costain announced that, having undertaken several months of detailed due diligence, it did not believe that it would be in the best interests of Costain shareholders for Costain to amend the terms of the Proposed Merger, that it would not be making a revised offer for May Gurney and that it intended to lapse the Proposed Merger at the earliest opportunity.

Accordingly, the Proposed Merger is expected to lapse, in accordance with its terms, on 29 May 2013.

The Group incurred transaction costs of approximately £4m (pre-tax) associated with the May Gurney proposal and these will be expensed in the first half results and treated as a one-off non trading item.

Outlook

Costain's continuing progress, despite challenging economic conditions, is a reflection of the Group's strategic focus on meeting the complex needs of customers by providing an integrated consulting, project delivery and operations and maintenance capability.

The Group believes that, driven by innovation, the strategic development of the business will be accelerated as we work with customers on their future programmes.

With strong financial resources and an increased order book, the Board remains confident of meeting its expectations in 2013.

Costain appointed to new TfL ECI framework

Costain, one of the UK's leading Tier One engineering solutions providers, is pleased to announce that it has been awarded one of four places on Transport for London's ('TfL') framework for Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) and Construction, initially worth approximately £200m overall. The Group is working on its first project within this framework: the Hammersmith Flyover strengthening project, worth approximately £60m.

The full project scope will be defined during the ECI phase, but is likely to involve strengthening the flyover using post-tensioning, replacing bearings, waterproofing and resurfacing the deck, and replacing the drainage.

Hammersmith Flyover, which is used by 90,000 road users a day, is situated on one of London's main strategic routes, and the strengthening work is essential to keep London moving.

The framework and the ECI work for Hammersmith start immediately; the framework will run for four years.

"and is on-course to deliver a result for the year which is in-line with the Board’s expectations."

Paragraph taken from today's trading statement....if only just for once they could just be a little more enthusiastic I'm sure the s p would get a good boost.

Acquisition of EPC Offshore Limited (EPC Offshore) and launch of Costain Upstream

1 August 2013

Costain, one of the UK's leading Tier One engineering solutions providers, is pleased to announce that it has today acquired EPC Offshore, a specialist oil & gas project management services company, for an initial consideration of £9.6 million (plus £1.0 million for excess cash). Costain also announces the launch of Costain Upstream, which will provide services across the life-cycle of upstream offshore oil and gas assets.

EPC Offshore Acquisition

Established in 2009, and with a workforce today of 75 professional staff led by founder and CEO Keith Wallace, EPC Offshore is a field development and project management specialist providing client-side services to North Sea oil and gas companies. The company is differentiated by its programme management expertise and the highly effective application of proprietary in-house systems and processes.

EPC Offshore delivered revenue of £11.7 million, adjusted EBITDA of £2.0 million (adjustments reflect the removal of certain shareholder related costs that will not be incurred by the business in future) and profit after tax of £1.1 million for the year ended 31 July 2012. EPC Offshore had gross assets of £3.3 million as at 31 July 2012. The acquisition is expected to be earnings enhancing to Costain in the first full year of acquisition.

The initial consideration for 100% of the share capital of EPC Offshore is £9.6 million (plus £1.0 million for excess cash included within the company) and was paid in cash on completion. Further consideration may also be payable depending on the financial performance of the business in the financial years ending 31 December 2014, 2015 and 2016 and the retention of certain key employees in 2016. This performance consideration is subject to a minimum of £2.0 million and a maximum of £14.4 million. The consideration funding will be provided from Costain’s existing debt facilities.

Launch of Costain Upstream

Costain Upstream will combine the capabilities of ClerkMaxwell, the oil and gas engineering and support services provider, which has more than doubled in size since its acquisition in 2011, and EPC Offshore to increase the scale of the Group’s services in the growing, high-value North Sea upstream oil and gas market. With a proven capability to deliver a wide range of services including engineering and consultancy, capital project management and asset support, the company will be strongly positioned in the UK offshore field development market where investment in 2013 is forecast at £13 billion (source: Oil & Gas UK - Activity Survey 2013).

The newly formed Costain Upstream will deliver engineering, capital projects and asset support services across four principal service lines; Field Development, Subsea Facilities, Topside Facilities, and Floating Systems, and comprises a resource pool of over 350 people.

Costain Upstream will be led by Keith Wallace, Chief Executive of EPC Offshore, supported by the leadership teams of both ClerkMaxwell and EPC Offshore. They will be based in Aberdeen with operating and support units in Maidenhead, Teeside, Manchester and Abu Dhabi. The acquisition of EPC Offshore will significantly accelerate the growth and market position of Costain Upstream.

Andrew Wyllie, CEO of Costain, commented:

“We are delighted to welcome EPC Offshore to the Costain Group, in an acquisition which will accelerate our stated strategy of broadening our range of capabilities in response to the requirements of major blue chip customers.

“The formation of Costain Upstream will significantly enhance our position in this sector, and the acquisition of EPC Offshore will boost its growth, complementing the front-end engineering and operations capabilities we acquired with ClerkMaxwell two years ago.

“There is a sizeable addressable market for these highly complex services and we see further compelling opportunities to grow our oil and gas footprint both in the UK and internationally.”

Interims out today http://www.moneyam.com/action/news/showArticle?id=4654960

Stan, that's a bit out of date...Costain are paying the interim divi tomorrow.

Looking quite bullish (in a toppy market?).

Costain, one of the UK's leading tier one engineering solutions providers, announces that it has appointed Liberum Capital Limited as its Joint Corporate Broker, alongside Investec Bank plc, with immediate effect.

Trading Update