Dawson to beat profit targets
DAWSON International, the AIM-listed textiles group, expects to beat market expectations when it posts full-year figures.
The Scottish firm, in which Yorkshire textile company Leeds Group has a 28.8% stake, said a strong final quarter from both its UK and US knitwear businesses had offset continued weakness in its home furnishings arm.
The business has also appointed a new non-executive deputy chairman, Giovanni Ghione, a director of Pontek Ltd. The Bahamas-registered business holds nearly 8% of Dawson shares.
In the UK knitwear benefited from high margin sales to couture customers while the US business sustained sales and margins throughout the final quarter.
In September the group warned that it was trading through the worst economic conditions experienced for a “very long time”.
Accordingly its private label home furnishings saw poor margins throughout the year, with the decline of sterling against the dollar impacting on the cost of sales. The business is expected to post a small loss.
The branded home furnishings arm continued to incur trading losses as Dawson pulls out of the sector following the sale of its Dorma brand to Dunelm Group in 2008. This exit should be completed in the first half of 2010.
Dawson said its Todd & Duncan yarn spinning division, which it sold to Chinese firm Zhongyin Cashmere Company in August, had incurred an extra loss of £500,000.
