Babcock chucking off cash

28th Sep 2011 07:48

Babcock International, the FTSE-250 engineering and support services firm, says it has been churning out cash in the first half of its financial year, which is doing wonders for its debt position.The company said it expects to see a further reduction in net debt at the half-year stage, and the company remains confident of achieving a net debt to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation ratio of less than 2 by the end of the financial year.Despite the progress made on its debt, the company said it is still considering a sale of its US defence business.Babcock's order book is operating at around £12 billion with strong contract wins from aggregates giant Lafarge and in nuclear decommissioning at Sellafield."We remain confident that the current economic climate will continue to create significant medium and long-term growth opportunities for our businesses where we are well placed to benefit from the scale of our operations, the breadth of our experience and our track record of delivering both operational and financial efficiencies," the company said.BS