The Heywood Williams Group, which includes Mila and Spectus, has announced a return to profit before exceptional items in its accounts for the year ended 31 December 2004.

HW’s divisions are LaSalle Bristol (North America), Hardware (UK/Europe) and Plastic Systems (UK./Europe), all of which are bulding relating and contribute 44%, 34% and 20% respectively to continuing 2004 gross turnover.

Turnover from continuing operations was up 1% to £319.0m. La Salle Bristol increased sales by 13% to $274m, helping the plc to a £5.3 million profit before taxatioin compared to a loss of £3.2m in 2003. The loss before tax after exceptional items and goodwill charges was £32.4m (2003:£71.8m). No dividend was paid to shareholders.

Heywood Williams delivered this improvement despite a number of adverse events in 2004. These included PVC-U raw material prices increasing during the year and Coldseal (the Group’s largest UK customer) going into receivership in November.

The Group ended the year with a positive cash position of £4.2 million compared with a £18.4 million debt at the end of 2003. The balance sheet was strengthened in the year with shareholders’ funds excluding goodwill increasing from £39.9 million to £52.1 million.

Robert Barr, the Group’s Chief Executive said; ‘The Group was restructured and simplified in 2004 into three market leading divisions and the process of returning the Group to growth has commenced.’

In particular he highlighted the changes that have been made in Spectus, the window profile business of Heywood Williams, commenting;Mr Barr added: ‘The focus is now on both winning new business with our state of the art new window profile suites Elite 70 and Elite 63 which offer significant benefits to fabricators, installers and consumers and growing Kestrel BCE, our cellular building products business.’

Source

Glass Age