Rotork profit rises thanks to larger orders, favourable market trends
Rotork, a FTSE 250 maker of industrial flow equipment, reported a jump in first-half pre-tax profit on Tuesday as revenue and order intake grew on the back of larger orders and favourable market trends.
FTSE 250
19,719.37
17:09 24/04/24
FTSE 350
4,419.71
17:09 24/04/24
FTSE All-Share
4,374.06
16:44 24/04/24
Industrial Engineering
13,665.84
17:09 24/04/24
Rotork
309.00p
16:35 24/04/24
Adjusted pre-tax profit was up 23.8% to £64.3m on revenue of £331m, up 10.4%. Meanwhile, the order intake increased 9.1% to £364.7m and the company lifted its interim dividend by 7.3% to 2.20p a share.
Rotork said customers' spend on maintenance and upgrades appears to be increasing to make up for the lack of investment over the previous few years, while the first quarter saw an improvement in investment in larger projects.
Chief executive Kevin Hostetler said: "During the first half of the year we saw a continuation of the more favourable market trends seen during the final quarter of 2017 as well as the receipt of several larger orders in the first quarter.
"We have made significant progress on the reviews of our routes to market, innovation funnel, operations footprint, supply chain, talent development and IT systems. We have completed the data capture and analysis phase of most workstreams."
Hostetler said expectations for organic constant currency growth are unchanged and the group expects revenues for the full year to show high single digit growth over last year on a reported basis, with currency headwinds reduced to around 3% at current exchange rates. The company also continues to expect adjusted operating margins to be slightly ahead of the year before.