egolinews.com

Boral Limited (BLD) said its post-tax profit for the six month to 31 December would come in at $68 million – including $20 million in lower interest costs - down 9% from the previous corresponding period. The company’s results continue to be held back by the poor economic conditions in the US and a slowdown in non-residential activity.

Boral CEO Mark Selway, who has been in the job for just over a month, said the focus for the company in the next six months would be to perform to expectations.

“In Australia, housing activity is showing signs of recovery which is being offset to a degree by a significant downturn in commercial non-dwelling work,” Mr Selway said.

”Government spending in the education and health sectors will be helpful and ongoing government spending on major infrastructure projects will sustain a pipeline of future activity.”

Mr Selway said the annualised rate of 570,000 starts for the first half of the year appeared to have bottomed out, however was 60% below the 50-year average of 1.5 million starts.

”Despite ongoing actions to reduce costs in the US business, revenue declined 42% to $183m resulting in a first half loss of $49m against a $37m loss in the prior year,” Mr Selway said.

”This represents a considerable improvement on the $72m loss in the second half last year on broadly similar sales volumes.”

However, growth across its Asian markets had helped deliver improved results, the company said.

Looking to the company’s results, sales revenue was $2.3 billion, down 10% from the previous corresponding period.

In Australia, revenue from Australian Construction Materials and its Cement division were both down 7%.

The company, however, couldn’t shrug off the poor result from the United States.

Looking ahead, the company said conditions would be difficult for the foreseeable future, however appeared to be slowly recovering from a very low base.

Broker analysts are forecasting net profit after tax ranging between $101m and $151m with consensus of $123.5m, the company said.

Subject to current levels of building starts, weather conditions and broadly consistent exchange rates, management expects full year profit to be broadly in line with consensus.

At the close Tuesday, Boral shares were trading at $5.48.

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