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(Alliance News) - Volution Group PLC on Monday said it is "likely" Covid-19 is going to impact future trading after a solid first half.
The ventilation products firm posted a 3.4% rise in revenue for the six months to January to GBP118.8 million, and excluding currency movements revenue rose 5.0%. Organic revenue fell 2.8%, however, due to weakness in the UK Commercial and Nordics segments.
Volution's overall revenue growth came from the acquisition of Ventair in Australia, completed in March 2019. Volution said integration is going well.
Pretax profit was 17% higher at GBP11.9 million, and adjusted pretax profit rose 7.2% to GBP20.5 million.
Crawley, West Sussex-based Volution is paying an interim dividend of 1.71 pence per share, 6.9% higher than 1.60p the year before.
"Volution has again delivered a good overall performance with continued strong cash conversion and an increase in the operating margin despite challenges in the UK Commercial and Nordic Projects markets," said Chief Executive Ronnie George.
"Aside from these areas we are pleased with how our revenue developed and the focus on our operational excellence programme has delivered organic margin expansion in all three geographic regions."
"The regulatory and consumer demands for ventilation are becoming more stringent and we continue to innovate bringing new products to market to take advantage of these exciting trends," George continued.
Turning to the Covid-19 outbreak, Volution said it has been working with Chinese suppliers to ensure minimal disruption. There has been no "significant" impact to-date.
"Whilst it is hard to forecast the direct impact on our business at this point there is clearly potential for adverse impacts on both supply and demand," said the company.
"However we continue to take actions to monitor and secure our supply chain and have limited sales exposure to some of the most affected countries to date (China, Italy and South Korea). As at the date of this report trading in the second half of the financial year has continued on a similar basis to the first-half performance," it concluded.
Shares were 8.8% lower on Monday at 155.00p each.
By George Collard; georgecollard@alliancenews.com
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