James Halstead: confident of meeting market expectations – of course!
James Halstead, the AIM quoted manufacturer of commercial flooring, and one of our AIM favourites, issued ‘the usual’ confident trading update recently reaffirming that they were ‘fully confident of meeting market expectations for the full year’, despite challenging market conditions in the UK which represents approx 40% of total sales.
Over the last six months they have seen a number of school, hospital and UK government PFI projects being delayed or deferred and there has been a slowdown in sales. Thankfully they have continued to experience good growth in many overseas markets including Germany, the group’s largest overseas market. Although sales prices are under pressure, with softer raw material prices and energy costs margins have been maintained. In addition, the performance of outsourced flooring products, positive exchange rates and overseas earnings means that everything remains on target. Despite being one of the larger AIM companies (mkt cap c£223m) and a…