3rd Mar 2025 20:12
Severfield PLC - York, England-based structural steel contractor - says it has cancelled effective immediately its agreement with Liberum regarding the GBP10 million share buyback programme announced in April 2024. In total, it had repurchased 13.4 million shares for GBP9.3 million between April 17 and Friday, February 28. Also issues a downbeat trading update, revising its 2025 underlying pretax profit forecast to between GBP18 million and GBP20 million. Expects 2026 underlying pretax profit to be lower than this revised guidance. Says that "market conditions have shown no signs of improvement" since its interim results in November, "with pricing remaining at tighter levels for longer than expected in a competitive market and project opportunities continuing to be either cancelled or delayed". Says this "includes a large project for which production was expected to commence in January and which has been recently delayed until early FY26". "Whilst the group has sought to mitigate the effects of these prevailing market conditions through new project awards, our normal contract execution improvements and cost reductions, as well as the cancellation of the share buyback programme, it has not been possible to secure sufficient work in the short term to fully offset the non-recovery of factory overheads in Q4," it says. Company adds: "Whilst we continue to see a good pipeline of project opportunities, client decision-making continues to be deferred and projects are not being awarded or progressing within normal timescales, consistent with the current lower level of business confidence in the UK economy as a whole." Read More
