Annual Report and Accounts - Hemscott IR

Post year end acquisition
We expect the renewables market for construction
materials to show growth ahead of market averages for
some time, as consumers become better informed and
invest to reduce their energy costs whilst improving
carbon generated.
On 30 January we acquired the renewable energy
distribution specialists, Solfex Energy Systems (‘Solfex’),
a company that in December 2012 was listed as the UK’s
fifth fastest growing private company in the Sunday
Times Virgin Fast Track 100.
Solfex uses its distribution platform to integrate and
supply components to the UK’s renewable companies
and provides a value-added service to customers through
comprehensive technical and customer support. It is a
valuable addition to the Plumbing and Heating Division
of our Group.
Our strategy of offering our customers an integrated
approach to energy efficient building will be greatly
enhanced by the market leading proposition created by
the Solfex team.
2013 performance
It is difficult to draw any conclusions from the first few
weeks of trading because the January 2012 comparator
was quite strong whilst 2013 has seen a continuation of
the poor weather conditions experienced in 2012. Overall
group LFL sales, on a delivered basis, for the first seven
weeks were down 5.1%.
General Specialist Plumbing
Merchanting Merchanting Consumer & Heating Total
% % % % %
(4.5) 2.0 (7.6) (5.4) (5.1)
We view underlying like-for-like sales in February as
broadly flat.
Outlook
Our like-for-like sales in quarter 4 of 2012 showed an
improving trend on the two previous quarters in most
of our businesses making it difficult to read for signals
of underlying activity. Accordingly, we look to medium
term indicators to plan our resource levels for 2013
and beyond.
In the short term, trends will be volatile; we
currently anticipate that our markets will be stronger
in the second quarter, mainly due to a relatively weak
comparator in 2012 and potential recovery from low
activity levels expected in first three months of this year.
Whilst this suggests difficult conditions will remain
in the first half year, there are reasons to be more
optimistic about the second half. The recent rise in
mortgage and housing transaction activity should feed
into improved volumes in the market by the second
half of the year. In the public sector market, the huge
potential spending on various infrastructure programmes
announced by the government should begin to gradually
show in real activity on (and in) the ground.
Overall we believe that market volumes for 2013 are
likely to be lower than 2012, but the rate of decrease will
be smaller than last year at around 1% to 2%. Inflation is
likely to stay low with early indications suggesting it will
be around 1% to 2% for the second year running.
Since the financial crisis in 2008, the term ‘roller
coaster’ could fairly be applied to the gradient of annual
and monthly change in our markets. Five years later,
we have yet to experience a flatter track, and we wait
for evidence of a steady recovery from the current
unsustainably low levels of activity.
We have an excellent track-record of matching our
margin and costs to the prevailing market conditions,
and we judge our cautious stance to be appropriate.
However, we shall be monitoring lead indicators
carefully, and expect that our next change will be to
a more expansionary stance in volume. We plan to
combine this with a restrained approach to costs, so as
to benefit from overhead gearing and further improve
operating margins. We anticipate increasing expenditure
only for unavoidable inflation and pension increases and
subject to satisfactory trading continuing, we plan to
invest further in pursuing our multichannel strategy.
Whilst, for most of our businesses, our operating
margins remain ahead of our competitors, the ‘trough’
levels of market activity are consistent with, against
recent history, operating margins, which we regard
as unsatisfactory for three of our four divisions. For
Specialist, P&H and Consumer divisions a combination
of self help initiatives and a recovering market should
deliver steady growth in operating margins. For Travis
Perkins, investments in improvements to the proposition
will be applied to increasing market share on a LFL
basis, whilst sustaining operating margins.
So in summary, we think the performance of our
markets in 2013 may begin to turn, but it will be
mainly through our own endeavours to outperform our
competition and manage our operating margin that the
Group will be driven forward.
Geoff Cooper
Chief Executive
Cain Doolan,
Manager,
BSS Industrial,
Reading
28