Pilkington forecasts fragile future

Date: 1 April 2004

Pilkington, the glassmaker, continued to warn of challenging trading conditions today, saying that it expected its building products market to remain weak.

The company said it remained on course to hit results forecasts, however, as it benefited from cost-cuts.The group, which has cut around a third of its workforce over the last decade, told investors in a trading statement that like-for-like sales had been held steady while operating profits would be maintained at last year’s levels.The performance for the year to March 31 reflects contrasting fortunes for its core divisions of building products and automotive glass.In building products, Pilkington said pricing pressure was likely to put operating profits from this business line down by 10 per cent on a year earlier.Only the UK and Australia have offered respite, although the company said efficiency improvements and cost savings helped mitigate market weakness.Depressed economic conditions on the continent, particularly in Germany, have hit Pilkington hard, particularly as it generates two-thirds of its building products sales in Europe.The North American arm of the division has also been affected by weakness in commercial construction, with Pilkington the region’s leading glass supplier.There was better news from the automotive division as manufacturing efficiencies helped Pilkington offset a flat market to improve operating profits in the financial year by around 30 per cent.In Europe, where just over half of Pilkington’s automotive sales take place, sales have increased through gains on new model instructions and higher shipments of specialised bus, coach and truck products.Pilkington, based in St Helens, Merseyside, employs around 25,000 people and has other plants at Birmingham and Doncaster.The company manufactures in 25 countries and has sales and distribution operations in more than 130.

In November, results for the six months to September 30 showed an 11 per cent hike in underlying profits to £84 million, even though turnover was flat at £1.4 billion.

Before today, analysts had expected annual pre-tax profits of £155 million, against £153 million a year earlier.

600450 Pilkington forecasts fragile future glassonweb.com

See more news about:

Others also read

The glass sector has the increasingly widespread requirement of having an unlimited catalogue of parametric shapes and creating new ones in a simple way without being an expert in the field.
Shoaib Akhtar is going to be back on Indian TV screens. He is going to be featured in the new TV ad campaign for Asahi Glass.
Glass Confusion is starting the New Year with Beginning Fused Glass group classes. The three-week course will be held Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and again from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Worldwide glass-substrate capacity is expected to continue to grow more than 40% each quarter through 2005, as a result of capacity expansion by existing glass-substrate suppliers and new companies joining the market, according to DisplaySearch.
Western Pennsylvania’s once-thriving glassmaking industry is dwindling, as did the domestic steel industry and for many of the same reasons: competition and cost.
Architects Robert and Esteve Terradas of Barcelona describe the city’s newly-renovated and expanded (45,000 m2) Science Museum (completed September 2004) as "a living museum that will set new standards in terms of transparency - a very modern construction that will enable the plants and animals inside to really live and breathe." The project was made possible by the use of an innovative grade of DuPont™ SentryGlas© Plus™ structural interlayer that is "UV-breathable, on the flat roof of an Amazonian rainforest exhibit".The UV-breathable 938 m2 laminated glass roof is rectangular in shape.

Add new comment