Barr(A.G.) PLC Pre Close Trading Update (9569T)
July 24 2015 - 2:00AM
UK Regulatory
TIDMBAG
RNS Number : 9569T
Barr(A.G.) PLC
24 July 2015
IMMEDIATE RELEASE 24 July 2015
A.G. BARR p.l.c.
Pre Close Trading Update
A.G. BARR p.l.c. ("A.G. BARR"), the soft drinks group, announces
a pre-close trading update in respect of the six months to 25 July
2015.
In the six month period to date trading has remained subdued as
anticipated; the combination of tough prior year comparatives and
changes to market promotional phasing, related to our Glasgow 2014
Commonwealth Games activity, along with poor weather, particularly
in the north of the UK, have all had an impact on our sales
performance. In addition, our Business Process Redesign project
(BPR) and the subsequent transition to a new company wide system
platform in early June has, as expected with a project of such
scale and complexity, given us some short term customer service
challenges which have also impacted our overall revenue
performance.
Half year sales revenue is expected to be c.GBP128m which is a
drop of c.5% on the prior year. On an ongoing basis, allowing for
the impact of the loss of the Orangina brand and the divested
Findlays brand, sales declined by c.3.5%.
Market conditions have remained competitive with ongoing
deflation across the soft drinks market and continued high levels
of price promotion. Despite these challenges our margins remain in
line with management expectations.
The last six months have been a very busy period at A.G. BARR
with the closure of our Tredegar site, commissioning of carton
packaging capability at Milton Keynes, the acquisition of Funkin
and the go-live of our BPR project, however all of these actions
will lay the foundations for further growth and operational
improvement. Our objective for the second half of the year is to
bring improved operational stability and growth to the business and
to begin to realise the benefits associated with the changes we
have made.
Our balance sheet remains strong and our capital investment
plans are in line with management expectations.
Outlook
As expected at the start of the year, our financial performance
in the current financial year will be more weighted to the second
half given our strong performance in the first half of last year,
combined with the significant operational improvement programme
currently being implemented.
We expect trading across the market will remain competitive,
however assuming there are no significant changes to the
competitive or customer landscape and that we continue to make good
progress on all our change initiatives, we plan to regain sales
momentum which would enable us to meet our expectations for the
full year. We will provide a further more detailed update in our
interim results on 22 September 2015.
A.G. BARR Tel: 01236 852400
Roger White, Chief
Executive
Stuart Lorimer,
Finance Director
Instinctif Tel: 020 7457 2020
Justine Warren
Matthew Smallwood
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
END
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