More like a flat bread than a souflle

I am getting bored with the present soufflé thread title, even if I started it.

The order book figure worked into the acquisition announcement caught my eye.
While we are all grasping at smoke, I thought it would be interesting to review the past announced order book and revenue figures. I appreciate that there is no reason to expect a tight relationship between the current order book and the immediate past revenue, but they are not likely to be totally unrelated.

For the EoFY figures tabled below, on average, the revenue has been circa 1.59 times the order book, although for the most recent four years the ratio is lower at about 1.38. The decrease possibly reflects the increasing size, and hence duration, of the average project or a move to maintenance rather than new work. Using the latter ratio and the announced 1.03b$ order book gives a revenue estimate of $1.42b,.which would be an increase of 9.2% on the prior year. That says nothing about the margin they might be making on that work, but I suspect  a revenue that high would be an achievement in its self, in the present environment. In any case, all will be revealed soon.

(I note that the early run of order book figures at an even $300m may have been coincidence or it might suggests that they were fairly rough figures back then.)

	Column 1	Column 2	Column 3
0	Date of announcement​	Order book $m​	Revenue $m​ (immediate prior FY)​
1	14/8/15​	1030​	-​
2	19/2/15​	712​	-​
3	21/8/14​	790​	1300​
4	18/2/14​	849​	-​
5	22/8/13​	835​	875​
6	21/2/13​	465​	-​
7	23/8/12​	618​	809​
8	23/2/12​	708​	-​
9	25/8/11​	300​	607​
10	24/2/11​	300​	-​
11	23/8/10​	300​	546​
12	10/3/10​	263​	-​
13	?/8/09​	245​	589​
14	3/2/09​	300​	-​
15	25/8/08​	170​	518.5​