LDN - Business

Rolls-Royce jumps on profit upgrade and bribery settlement

[January 17, 2017] By Sarah Young

LONDON (Reuters) - Shares in Rolls-Royce jumped 6 percent on Tuesday after the British maker of engines for planes and ships settled a long-running bribery probe and said 2016 profit would beat expectations.

Rolls has undergone 18 months of cost-cutting and restructuring under CEO Warren East, who was brought in to stabilize the company in mid-2015 after a series of profit warnings.

Rolls's settlement of bribery investigations with British, U.S. and Brazilian authorities also helped to remove a cloud which has hung over the company since 2013, even though the penalty was bigger than analysts had expected.

The company said on Monday it would pay 671 million pounds ($813 million) to settle the investigations.

Shares in Rolls jumped 6.1 percent to 706 pence at 0951 GMT, hitting their highest level for two months.

News of the bigger-than-expected settlement was "negative but benign" as the authorities had agreed to allow Rolls to spread payments out over five years, said Jefferies analyst Sandy Morris.

"This is by no means a great moment in Rolls-Royce's history but in terms of a healing process, getting the SFO settled and having trading, particularly on cash flow improving, well maybe, just maybe, Rolls is on the mend," Morris said.

Rolls said in its statement on Monday that it had finished the year strongly meaning that profit and cash flow would be ahead of expectations.

The company is due to report 2016 results on Feb. 14 with the consensus forecast for annual pretax profit to halve to 686 million pounds.

East's self-help measures, which include making savings of up to 200 million pounds a year from this year, plus a positive market backdrop for aircraft engines and a helpful post-Brexit slump in the pound could all have boosted profits, said Jefferies' Morris.

Analysts are positive on the turnaround plan East has led at the company, which has included shedding hundreds of managers, speeding up decision-making.

"I think East's doing a really good job. He's doing all the right things," said Agency Partners analyst Nick Cunningham.

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Warren East, CEO of Rolls-Royce, poses for a portrait at the company's aerospace engineering and development site in Bristol, Britain, December 17, 2015. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo

East himself, however, acknowledges that the company still faces a huge challenge as it tries to execute its restructuring at the same time as almost doubling its output of wide-body plane engines by 2019 to meet orders while avoiding cost overruns and technical problems.

Over the last 12 months, shares in Rolls have outperformed Britain's blue-chip index <.FTSE>, rising 33 percent, but have declined 8 percent since November when the company set out what new accounting procedures due in 2018 would mean for its profits.

SEA CHANGE FOR SFO

Rolls, which also makes engines for military jets, ships and nuclear-powered submarines, said the settlements agreed with the three authorities would involve the group paying about 293 million pounds in the first year.

A UK court will rule later on Tuesday on whether it approves the deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) in principle between Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and Rolls. That deal covers the company, meaning that individuals can still be prosecuted by the authorities.

It would be the largest penalty issued by the SFO, marking a significant victory for an authority set up to deal with the most serious and complex fraud cases but one which has had a chequered record in securing convictions over its 28-year history.

"Rolls-Royce provisional DPA marks a sea change in the Serious Fraud Office's war on bribery and corruption, and helps the UK to be seen as more on an equal footing with powerful U.S. enforcement authorities," said Lisa Osofsky, European chair at financial crime and risk advisory Exiger.

Since the allegations of possible corruption by some of its overseas intermediaries emerged four years ago, Rolls-Royce has appointed a lawyer to lead a review of its compliance and has set up audit committees at each of its units.

(Reporting by Sarah Young; editing by Kate Holton)

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