Breedon Aggregates shares down on positive final results

Breedon Aggregates was laying out a year of good growth on Wednesday, publishing its audited results for the 2015 calendar year, and signalling positive expectations going forward.

The AIM-traded company saw revenue grow 18.1% during the year to £318.5m, from £269.7m. Underlying EBIT was up 55.6% to £37.8m, and profit before tax improved 46.3% to £31.3m.

Breedon's underlying basic earnings per share were 2.86p, up from 1.64p a year earlier. On 31 December, the firm had net cash of £10.3m, a stark turnaround from the £66.3m net debt it reported at the end of 2014.

The company's executive chairman Peter Tom described 2015 as another significant year for Breedon.

"Our trading performance continued to improve and we again reported record results. We finalised our largest ever contract win and announced the planned acquisition of Hope Construction Materials," he explained.

"We are tremendously excited by the future potential for this business," Tom added.

Early in 2016, the company welcomed a new group chief executive, Pat Ward, who succeeded Simon Vivian.

Vivian had continued as an executive director, but he was now to step down from that role on 10 March, and be re-appointed in a non-executive role at the next board meeting.

"The outlook for our business continues to be encouraging. The government remains committed to infrastructure investment and all the relevant forecasting bodies predict modest but sustained growth in construction output over the next few years," Tom said.

"This means a steady growth in demand for our products. Against this background, volumes are expected to recover gradually to pre-recession levels by 2020."

The company did not announce any dividend, with the board explaining these would be paid to shareholders when they believed it was appropriate and prudent to do so.

At 1430 GMT, shares in Breedon were trading down 2.53% to 67.5p, having followed a primarily downward trend for much of the day.