Profits and revenues on the up at world-leading polymer firm

Profits and revenues are up at a firm which specialises in making world-leading polymers for the car and aerospace industries.

Profit before tax was up 15% to £127.m and revenues rose by 12% to £326m at Blackpool FTSE 250 company Victrex – according to its preliminary results.

Jakob Sigurdsson, chief executive of the firm, said: “This has been a strong year for Victrex, with broad based growth in our core polymer business and further good progress in our new product pipeline.

“ We delivered a range of notable milestones across each of our mega-programmes and we are currently closing in on larger opportunities in Gears, as well as being in advanced discussions for new strategic Aerospace alliances.”

He added: “After my first year as CEO, it’s clear that moving downstream through our Polymer & Parts strategy will further differentiate Victrex in a competitive market and enable us to capture our long-term growth opportunities.

“We will continue to invest in support of future growth, as well as reviewing partnership and acquisition opportunities.

“Strong cash generation continues to offer the opportunity of attractive returns to shareholders and we are today announcing a special dividend of 82.68p, whilst retaining the current dividend distribution policy, thereby balancing investment for growth with shareholder return.

“For 2019, our expectation is for continued momentum in our core polymer business and milestones in our mega-programmes.

“We expect to make good progress on a constant currency basis, however, adverse currency, no expected volumes in Consumer Electronics and recent market softness in Automotive may hold back our ability to substantially improve on our overall 2018 performance, with these headwinds falling mainly in the first half.

“A better second half, compared to the prior year, is our current assessment and with strong structural growth opportunities and a healthy new product pipeline, we continue to be well-placed for the medium and long term.”

Victrex is an innovative world leader in high performance polymer solutions, focused on the strategic markets of automotive, aerospace, energy electronics and medical.