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(Alliance News) - Vesuvius PLC on Thursday said it has launched a set of restructuring initiatives following a drop in profit in the first half of 2019.
The metal flow engineering company said pretax profit in the six months to the end of June fell 11% to GBP78.6 million, while revenue slipped by 1.1% to GBP889.4 million.
Vesuvius declared an interim payout of 6.2 pence a share, up 3.3% from 6.0p paid the year before.
The FTSE 250-listed company launched a set of restructuring initiatives targeting its manufacturing network. These new initiatives are expected to deliver annual savings of GBP16.0 million by 2021 at an incremental cost of GBP25.7 million, Vesuvius said.
In the first half of 2019, Vesuvius delivered GBP5.8 million of restructuring benefits, which is GBP1.2 million lower than originally anticipated, as a result of slower than planned efficiency gains in Foundry Europe, the Middle East and Africa restructuring.
"Vesuvius has delivered a solid set of results for the first half of 2019, despite the challenging market environment and we are announcing today a GBP16.0 million increase in our targeted restructuring savings," said Chief Executive Patrick Andre.
"Looking forward, assuming a stabilisation of our end markets at current levels, the board expects our trading profit for 2019 to be broadly in-line with market expectations, supported by the acceleration and intensification of efforts to optimise our costs and remains confident in our ability to grow both trading profit and return-on-sales in the coming years," added Andre.
Vesuvius shares were trading 0.7% higher in London at 533.00p each on Thursday.
