WS Atkins spending £178m on US presence

WS Atkins, which has offices in Leeds, York and Sheffield employing around 600 staff, said yesterday it will finance the deal for the employee-owned firm based in Florida from existing cash resources and a new four-year facility of 150m.

Chief executive Keith Clarke said: "The rationale for the deal is that it gives us a much better geographic presence. It moves us from being just over 70 per cent UK to just over 50 per cent UK ... and provides a very significant platform for growth."

He added: "We expect the deal to be significantly enhancing underlying earnings immediately and to generate returns in excess of Atkins' cost of capital in the first full year."

WS Atkins helps to design big building projects such as London's 2012 Olympic site.

In the year to September 30 2009, PBSJ generated earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of 29.5m on gross revenue of 502.5m.

"The US market has been an obvious gap for Atkins for a while so this move appears to make a lot of sense to us," said Panmure Gordon analyst Andy Brown. The US design market is estimated to be worth 50.3bn.

WS Atkins also said it had traded in line with internal expectations in its first quarter, with its outlook unchanged since full-year results were published in June.