SIG sees full-year profit in line despite bad weather

The company, which began life as Sheffield Insulations Limited but now operates across in 11 countries across Europe, said pretax profit for 2009 before amortisation and exceptional items would not be less than the current market consensus of 60m.

But SIG warned that the outlook for 2010 remains challenging given the uncertainity in construction markets.

Total sales for the year dropped 10 per cent to 2.7bn while like-for-like sales fell by 11.5 per cent, SIG said.

SIG, which supplies specialist products to the construction sector, said its focus on reducing capex led to cash generation of 119m during the year and it reduced net debt to 260m from 697m at the end of 2008.

The company said in November that the rate of decline of volumes had slowed in the second half of 2009.