Trifast warns on full-year results, shares tank

Trifast tanked on Monday as it warned that full-year results would be "significantly" below its previous expectations, pointing to low visibility and volatile demand.

For the year to the end of March, the company now expects revenue of around £230m and an adjusted EBIT margin percentage of around 5%.

Trifast, which specialises in the design, engineering, manufacture, and distribution of industrial fastenings, said that as reported in the interim results in November, trading were characterised by low visibility and volatile demand in a number of end market and geographic segments.

"Disappointingly, performance in December 2023 was impacted by significantly lower than forecasted volumes in both our Asia operations and global distribution sales channel," it said.

"Whilst we had anticipated both of these areas to see a recovery from subdued activity in H1, demand conditions and excess customer inventory levels have pushed this recovery further into 2024 and we now expect these challenging conditions to persist through to the end of the financial year."

Given the weak outlook, Trifast also announced plans to further reduce operating costs through a cutback of around 10% in its non-operational staff globally. This is expected to deliver annualised savings of around £3m.

"As part of the restructure, we will establish a leaner organisational structure to enable faster decision making. In parallel, we are undertaking a strategic review of our global footprint to identify further cost efficiencies which will reset our business for the future," it said.

At 1050 GMT, the shares were down 14% at 80.40p.