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(Alliance News) - Coral Products PLC on Monday said it will skip its interim dividend as sales and profit fell due to a number of issues.
Plastic products maker Coral blamed uncertainty caused by Brexit, the UK general election, a major customer fire, and an increase in re-organisation costs for the declines.
Shares were down 19% at 6.55 pence each on Monday morning in London.
For the six months ended October 31 the plastic products maker recorded a 7.2% fall in sales to GBP12.1 million. Pretax profit fell sharply to GBP25,000 from GBP582,000.
St Helens-based Coral has proposed no dividend, after a dividend of 0.25p for the same period a year ago.
"Trading in the first half of the current year shows revenue and gross profit both below the same period for last year, but showing an improved trend compared with last year's second half".
In the six months to April 2019 sales were GBP11.7 million.
Net debt at the end of October increased 25% to GBP8.6 million from GBP6.9 million a year prior due to the adoption of the IFRS 16 accounting standard.
The company said despite a "disappointing" second half of financial 2019, it believes the first half of financial 2020 has improved despite volatile currency fluctuations and variable trading conditions.
However, Coral stated it is likely to report as small pretax loss for the full year and a drop in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. Pretax profit in 2019 was GBP41,000 and underlying Ebitda GBP2.5 million.
Looking ahead, Non-Executive Chair Joe Grimmond said: "We know that the second half will be challenging. With Brexit timelines still undecided, we continue to focus on operational cost control to enable an improved gross margin".
By Ife Taiwo; ifetaiwo@alliancenews.com
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