29 May 2012
Eleco plc
(“Eleco” or the “Company”)
AGM Statement
John Ketteley, Executive Chairman of Eleco plc (AIM: ELCO), made the following statement at the Company’s Annual General Meeting today:
“Current Trading
Group Profit before tax and interest for the first four months of 2012, based on unaudited internal management accounts and before exceptional costs of £163,000, amounted to £51,000, compared with a loss before tax and interest of £1,529,000 before exceptional costs of £232,000 for the same period last year.
ElecoPrecast®
I refer you also to the recently announced rationalisation under the ElecoPrecast® brand of our precast concrete interests, which will involve much closer co-operation between Bell & Webster Concrete in Grantham and Milbury Systems in Lydney. Unfortunately, the rationalisation process will inevitably result in some redundancies and further exceptional costs before the anticipated benefits of the closer collaboration between the two businesses become evident. The Board considered these aspects very carefully indeed before taking its decision to proceed.
Completion of the ElecoPrecast® project will mean that we shall have achieved our objective of establishing two clearly defined business entities in the Group, namely, ElecoBuild®, comprising all our UK building systems interests, and ElecoSoft®, comprising all our software interests, including Asta Development in the UK, Consultec in Sweden and Esign and Eleco Software in Germany.
Trading Outlook
With regard to the trading outlook for the business, all of ElecoBuild®’s building systems interests remain exposed to the UK construction industry, where trading conditions continue to be particularly difficult and with little respite expected. However, we do believe that the actions taken by management to reduce costs and to stabilise and rationalise these businesses over the past two years, should enable ElecoBuild® to operate profitably in such conditions going forward.
Our software interests have performed well in the first four months of the year. More than 75 per cent of the turnover and profits of ElecoSoft® is attributable to its operations in Germany and Sweden together with its involvement in other international markets; ElecoSoft®’s remaining software interests are based in the UK where they have also performed creditably, despite being exposed to a currently weak UK construction market.
When considering the significant structural changes that have had to be made to the Group’s operations in the past two and a half years, the Board of Eleco believes that the Company now has the potential to perform better in both its building systems and construction software markets, despite of difficult conditions that are still being experienced across the UK construction market.”
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Enquiries: |
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Eleco plc |
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John Ketteley, Executive Chairman |
+44 (0)1920 443830 |
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Cenkos Securities plc |
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Adrian Hargrave |
+44 (0) 207 397 8900 |
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Peckwater PR |
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Tarquin Edwards |
+44 (0) 7879 458 364 |
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