Halstead on track for a record year

COMMERCIAL flooring manufacturer and distributor James Halstead is ‘confident’ of delivering another set of record annual results, despite rising raw material and energy cost and a tough domestic market.

The Radcliife-based group said in a pre-close trading update for the year ended June 30, that it had continued to trade ‘robustly’ in the second half after record revenue in the first half.

The group said overall turnover was on track to show growth of 15% – mostly as a result of a strong export performance.

It said this was not just down to the weak pound making its products more affordable to overseas buyers: “The growth in our export markets is particularly strong and it is too simplistic to put this down to the value of sterling. Our exports have grown over a generation and we are well placed to continue supplying flooring to major infrastructure projects across the globe.”

Despite ongoing difficulties in the UK market – a consequence of the continuing recession in the building sector – turnover is expected to be ahead here too.

This has been delivered by growing market share and by also focusing more on what it called the “heavy domestic” marketplace.

Halstead said rising raw material and energy costs had continued to impact on margins, although though there were some ‘compensatory effects’ such as improved margins on increased international sales.

“Our cash balances and even after dividends, acquisitions and plant expenditure it should exceed the levels of last year.

Taking all the above into consideration the Board is confident that the Company will report another year of record profits for the year ended 30 June 2011 in line with market expectations.”