9th Mar 2018 07:52
LONDON (Alliance News) - SIG PLC said on Friday its loss narrowed in 2017, and lifted its dividend slightly as revenue grew and costs fell.
The FTSE 250-listed building products distributor reported a pretax loss of GBP51.3 million for 2017, narrowed from GBP110.0 million the year before as one-off costs declined, despite remaining high, at GBP128.2 million from GBP184.4 million in 2016.
The costs came from losses on the agreed sales or closures of non-core businesses and associated impairment charges, as well as restructuring costs mostly in the UK and Ireland region.
On an underlying basis, pretax profit rose by 4.3% to GBP79.2 million from GBP75.9 million.
Revenue grew to GBP2.88 billion from GBP2.84 billion the prior year, as like-for-like sales grew by 3.8%. Despite challenging market conditions in the UK & Ireland business, coming from increased macro uncertainty and delays in commercial new build, the Mainland Europe business recovered through improved marketing confidence, with no forecast of an erosion in gross margin.
SIG declared a dividend of 3.75 pence per share for 2017, up from 3.66p the year before, a cut from 4.60p in 2015.
"As the group moves into 2018, we are seeing increasingly confident markets across Mainland Europe and Ireland, but also the first signs of capacity and labour constraint in buoyant construction markets. In contrast, we are seeing an increasingly challenging environment in the UK created by macro uncertainty and recent events in the construction industry," said Chief Executive Officer Meinie Oldersma.
"Notwithstanding this outlook, we see considerable potential for a significant improvement in operational and underlying financial performance, with execution largely within management's control, and we are working hard to ensure effective delivery," Oldersma added.
In addition on Friday, SIG said that Non-Executive Director Chris Geoghegan has retired from the board after nine years.
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