British structural steel company Severfield Rowen Plc expects its margins to reduce by another couple of percentage points in 2009 mainly due to a fall in demand in the UK, its Chief Executive said. "Analysts have predicted that in 2009 margins will reduce from 13 something percent to around 10 percent. They dont too often get it wrong," CEO Tom Haughey told Reuters.
The companys 2008 margins had fallen to 13.31 percent from 14.29 percent a year ago. Severfield said on Wednesday some key traditional sectors - large retail development, commercial offices and warehousing - in the UK have declined significantly in scale.
Haughey said some of the adverse effects had been compensated by a growth in power and energy, health, education and aviation sectors. However, it has not totally mitigated the decline and so the company is increasing its efforts to export some of its production outside the United Kingdom, the CEO said.
"We have opened an office in Abu Dhabi and we will export next year perhaps 20 percent of our output to the Middle East and North Africa, primarily for the petrochemical and aviation sectors," Haughey said. Severfield Rowen, which supplied steel for Heathrows Terminal Five and soccer club Arsenals Emirates Stadium, posted a 22 percent rise in underlying pretax profit for 2008 and said it was confident of "satisfactory" results in 2009.
Comments
Comments are closed.