Heating and plumbing supplier Wolseley has reported a sharp drop in first-quarter trading profit in Britain as a slowdown in the country's economic recovery hurt construction activity.
Trading profit in the division fell 21 per cent in the three months through October to £19 million, the company said.
Like-for-like UK revenue fell 1.1 per cent in the August to October period as the market for the company's core repairs and maintenance business remained weak.
Britain's economic growth slowed more than expected in the three months to September after a slump in construction, which statisticians partly blamed on a wet August.
Revenue growth in Wolseley's US industrial business also disappointed in the first quarter as it continued to be affected by a weak oil and gas sector and the strength of the dollar.
"While we anticipated that growth would be Q2-weighted against strong comparatives for the U.S. business, this was slightly lower than anticipated, which we believe may be a disappointment to the market," Goodbody Capital Markets analyst said in a note to clients.
The company had cut its revenue growth outlook in September saying it expected little growth in a competitive British market and anticipated industrial markets in North America to remain challenging.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here