Paving specialist Marshalls lost the equivalent of six days’ slab-laying because of the torrential rain in the first six months it said today.
That knocked revenues down by £10 million to £167 million, a 5% drop on a year ago. As a result, Marshalls is upping cost-cutting including shedding some jobs. This will cost £7 million this year but should result in annual savings of at least £4 million.
Marshalls said sales to the public sector and commercial end of the market, which account for almost two thirds of its sales, were down 2% but on the patios and drives domestic side they fell 14%.
Construction is set to fall this year and next but the latest survey of domestic installers shows their order books have risen from seven weeks’ worth of work to nine weeks’.
Broker Panmure Gordon cut its profit forecast for the year by £2 million to £10.5 million and the shares gave up 7.5p to 79.38p. But broker Peel Hunt rates them a buy with a target of 105p.
