10th Dec 2024 12:52
(Alliance News) - Ferguson Enterprises Inc on Tuesday reported increased sales and volumes, and raised its dividend for its financial first quarter, although profit declined.
Shares in Ferguson were down 6.9% to 15,890.00 pence in London on Tuesday afternoon. They were down 7.1% to USD202.40 in the New York pre-market.
The Newport News, Virginia-based heating and plumbing products distributor said that for the three months that ended October 31, net sales rose 0.8% to USD7.77 billion from USD7.71 billion a year previous. However, this was below market consensus of USD8.07 billion.
Sales volume rose by about 3%, or around 2% on an organic basis.
"Continued weakness in certain commodity related categories drove modest overall price deflation of around 2%," Ferguson added.
Pretax profit decreased 9.7% to USD624 million from USD691 million, Ferguson reported. Adjusted diluted earnings per share dropped 7.5% to USD2.45 from USD2.65, missing consensus expectations of a rise to USD2.88.
Ferguson declared a quarterly dividend of 83 US cents, up from 79 cents for the first quarter of 2023.
Cost of sales rose 1.0% to USD5.43 billion from USD5.38 billion. Selling, general & administrative expenses increased 4.8% to USD1.59 billion from USD1.51 billion.
"Our associates remained focused on execution, delivering revenue growth in the quarter, despite continued market headwinds and commodity price deflation," commented Chief Executive Officer Kevin Murphy. "The year has started largely as expected and our balanced business mix and ability to deploy scale locally give us confidence in our continued market outperformance.
"Our strong balance sheet and cash generative model allow us to continue to invest for organic growth, consolidate our fragmented markets through acquisitions and return capital to shareholders."
Looking ahead, Ferguson is maintaining its full-year guidance including low-single digit net sales growth and an adjusted operating operating margin between 9.0% and 9.5%.
"Our fiscal 2025 financial guidance remains unchanged, reflecting modest full year revenue growth with continued outperformance," explained Murphy. "While we anticipate an ongoing challenging near-term market environment, we will continue to invest in scale and capabilities to take advantage of multi-year structural tailwinds such as under-built and ageing US housing, non-residential large capital projects and our opportunity with the plumbing and HVAC specialised professional."
By Emma Curzon, Alliance News reporter
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