LONDON (Alliance News) - Engineering company Fenner PLC issued another profit warning on Wednesday as it said it swung to a pretax loss in the year to the end of August, hit by falling revenue amid tough markets, particularly in the US.
Fenner said while trading in the majority of the group remains in line with its expectations, the further deterioration in the US coal industry means the group is now likely to see its results for the current financial year miss its previous expectations.
Due to restructuring costs and lower revenue, Fenner's pretax loss for the year to August 31 was GBP5.3 million, swung from a GBP29.2 million profit a year earlier. Stripping out the one-off costs it booked, underlying pretax profit was down to GBP42.5 million from GBP65.6 million.
Revenue fell to GBP666.7 million from GBP729.4 million, Fenner said, as its Advanced Engineered Products contributed more to the revenue mix, despite that division having been hit hard by a downturn in orders from the oil and gas industry. The Engineered Conveyor Solutions took an even more severe bruising from weakness in the mining industry.
The ECS business in North America will be restructured soon, and Fenner said it will release further details on those plans in early 2016.
The company said it would pay a final dividend of 8.00 pence per share, unchanged year-on-year, leaving its total dividend flat at 12.00p.
Shares in Fenner were down 4.5% to 147.02p on Wednesday.
By Sam Unsted; samunsted@alliancenews.com; @SamUAtAlliance
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