30th Apr 2020 17:05
(Alliance News) - SIG PLC on Thursday said it has commenced the re-opening of some of its sites across its distribution and roofing businesses.
The building materials supplier said that it has begun re-opening 15 sites across its distribution business and 20 sites across its roofing business.
In March, SIG said it would temporarily close the majority of its operations except for six sites in Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Rayleigh and London due to UK government-imposed restrictions.
On Thursday, the company said it plans to have majority of its closed sites open by mid-May.
Sites in France have remained open with trading in the country seeing a gradual uptick, it said. While operations in Germany, Holland and Poland have remained open with trading continuing on a "near-to-normal" basis, sites in Ireland stay closed except for a small number which are supporting critical and emergency projects.
Separately, SIG said that in efforts to conserve cash, it has furloughed 2,000 employees and halted discretionary spend in addition to cutting pay for its board and the executive team. As at the end of last Friday, the company had cash of GBP142 million.
The company continues to expects underlying pretax profit of around GBP42 million in its 2019 results scheduled to be published on May 28. For comparison, in 2018 underlying profit before tax was GBP75.3 million.
SIG shares closed 7.3% higher at 23.86 pence each on Thursday in London.
By Ife Taiwo; [email protected]
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