Portmeirion sounds upbeat tone despite profits drop

Stoke-based homewares manufacturer Portmeirion has released upbeat preliminary full-year results for 2020, despite falls in both revenue and profits.

The firm profits decline from £7.4m in 2019 to £1.4m last year, while turnover dropped by £92.8m to £87.9m over the same period.

The firm said it saw a “significant increase” in online sales last year, with ecommerce turnover up by almost 70%.

Mike Raybould, chief executive, said: “Although 2020 was a challenging year due to the huge disruption caused by Covid-19, our consumer homeware brands have shown great resilience and our business has continued to successfully pivot further to online sales. Pleasingly, we saw strong growth in our own online sales channels and we see the market shift to increased online shopping offering us a great opportunity to expand further in our key markets.

“Following the successful equity raise in June 2020, and despite the disruption caused by Covid-19, we have increased our investment into the business and made a number of strategic hires, in particular expanding our online and digital marketing teams and making our operations more efficient. We believe this will put our business in a strong position to deliver on our two pillar strategy of generating consistent, sustainable sales growth; and improving our operating margins, thereby converting our sales more effectively into profit.

“We are encouraged to see our positive trading momentum from H2 2020 continue in Q1 2021 despite the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. We remain alert to further potential disruption in our key markets, but are confident of returning to growth in 2021.”