SNC-Lavalin CEO expects "flattish" 2016 top line growth

By Allison Lampert

MONTREAL (Reuters) - SNC-Lavalin Group Inc Chief Executive Neil Bruce said he expects "flattish" revenues next year, as the engineering and construction company prepares to cut costs to help hit 2017 margin targets in a weaker economy.

"We are pretty much signalling to the market that we don't see a lot of top-line growth," Bruce told Reuters in an interview at the company's Montreal head office. "It will be flattish. So therefore that's the softer economic environment for all of our businesses when you take it on average."

In October, Bruce succeeded Robert Card, an outsider brought in after the Montreal firm faced allegations of corruption against former executives.

Bruce said on a conference call last week that the company is undertaking a sweeping cost-cutting programme that would use strategies like consolidating office space and evaluating how much staff SNC needs to execute its work. The programme's goal is to help SNC deliver an annualised EBITDA margin of 7 percent in its energy and construction business.

"Part of the reason of having the cost-reduction programme was to make sure that we were right sized going into next year in a softer environment generally," he said Tuesday.

Bruce said it was not yet clear whether SNC would reduce its workforce as part of the cost-cutting programme.

"If we look and go through the process and find that we've got an efficiency opportunity and then we can't redeploy these people then yes," he said.

(Reporting By Allison Lampert; Editing by Christian Plumb)