(Reuters) -British landscaping and roofing products supplier Marshalls on Wednesday flagged challenging market conditions in the housing sector spilling into 2024 after posting a 26% drop in half-year profit.
The British housing sector is in the middle of a pronounced slowdown as high mortgage rates and wider economic issues drive homebuyers away, forcing builders to slash targets and profit forecasts.
“Market conditions in new house building and private housing RMI (renovation, maintenance and improvement) were challenging in the first half of the year, which led to a material reduction in volumes across all three of our reporting segments,” the company said in a statement.
The Elland, UK-based Marshalls said it was ensuring sufficient latent manufacturing capacity to respond promptly when there is an improvement in market conditions after confirming around 250 job cuts revealed last month.
The FTSE midcap firm’s adjusted pre-tax profit declined to 33.2 million pounds ($42.2 million) for the six months ended June 30.
It also slashed interim dividend payment to 2.6 pence per share from 5.7 pence a share paid a year earlier.
($1 = 0.7859 pounds)
(Reporting by Aby Jose Koilparambil in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza and Sohini Goswami)
