CHURCHILL CHINA plc
(“Churchill China” or the “Company”)
AGM STATEMENT
Churchill China plc (AIM: CHH), the manufacturer of innovative performance ceramic products serving hospitality markets worldwide, will hold its Annual General Meeting at 12 noon today. At the meeting, Alan McWalter, Chairman, will make the following statement:
“I would like to update you on the progress our business has made since our 2019 Preliminary Results announcement on 8 April 2020.
As we anticipated at the time, the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown in the UK and overseas on our sales to hospitality markets has been significant. Following a strong start to the year, trading in April and May was well below normal levels. A number of actions were implemented to mitigate the effect of this reduction in activity, with output, cost and liquidity levels being carefully managed. We have, however, continued to despatch orders from our UK, European and North American warehouses throughout the second quarter of the year.
We are now beginning to see the first signs of an improvement in trading with growing levels of orders and activity. Hospitality outlets in our major European markets have now largely re-opened albeit with some level of restrictions. The UK's exit from lockdown has begun and we anticipate increased market demand over the next few months. However we still expect overall monthly revenues to remain below 2019 levels for some time as hospitality market activity re-adjusts.
During May we re-opened our manufacturing operations in Stoke on Trent at a reduced level of output and under safe working conditions. Output will now be progressively increased until revised operating levels are reached later in the summer. We have commenced a process to adjust costs across our business consistent with these lower levels of activity and as such we have entered into a consultation period with our employees in relation to the potential reduction in the size of our workforce. We hope that this period will allow us to mitigate the effect of this workforce reduction on our employees. No decision has yet been made on the number of redundancies that may result from this process.
Our operational and financial position remains strong and we will continue to target growth in export markets where we have significant potential to increase both market share and revenue over the long term. We have an experienced management team and the Company retains a high degree of flexibility to respond to the anticipated recovery in business conditions. We will also continue to invest in the development of our business.”