Revenues recover at specialist buildings materials supplier
Sheffield-based building materials specialist, SIG, says its revenues in the second half of the year showed a solid recovery.
The listed business, which has issued a trading update for the year ended 31 December 2020, says its “Return to Growth” strategy is starting to deliver progress in terms of improved organic sales performance.
SIG’s Board expects to report FY20 revenues from underlying operations of about £1,870m, subject to audit.
Also subject to audit, the Group will report an underlying operating loss in the range of £57m to £61m for the full year, which it notes is at the “better end of the range of previous expectations”.
The results show that profitability continued to improve throughout the second half, after the underlying operating loss of £43m in H1.
The Group finished the year with net debt of £5m on a pre IFRS 16 basis, and with gross cash balances of £233m.
SIG added that its FY20 like-for-like (LFL) revenues declined 13% compared to the prior year. And reported Group revenues from underlying operations were 12.7% lower in the year.
It reported that all of it’s operations remain open, despite the latest Government restrictions.
Outlining the firm’s outlook, the statement said: “Whilst the evolving Covid-19 backdrop will continue to create uncertainty in the short term, the fundamentals of the Group’s markets remain sound and the strong recovery in demand across territories and sectors through the second half was encouraging.
“Providing there is no material disruption to either our business or end markets as a result of the pandemic, the Board expects the near term benefits of the actions taken in 2020 to deliver organic revenue growth in 2021, including market share gains.
“The benefits of this will become increasingly evident as the year progresses and should enable us to return to underlying operating profitability during the second half.”
