Preliminary Results for the year ended 30 April 2019
Colefax is an international designer and distributor of furnishing fabrics & wallpapers and owns a leading interior decorating business. The Group trades under five brand names, serving different segments of the soft furnishings marketplace; these are Colefax and Fowler, Cowtan & Tout, Jane Churchill, Manuel Canovas and Larsen.
Key Points
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Sales increased by 0.4% to £86.36m (2018: £86.05m) in a challenging trading environment
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Pre-tax profit increased by 8.0% to £5.10m (2018: £4.72m) with another strong performance by the Decorating Division
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Earnings per share up by 3.2% to 39.3p (2018: 38.1p)
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Strong cash generation of £4.92m (2018: £5.54m) before dividends and share buybacks
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£4.32m returned to shareholders via share buybacks (2018: £2.17m)
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Net cash at year end increased to £9.5m (2018: £9.2m)
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Proposed increased final dividend of 2.70p per share (2018: 2.60p), taking total for the year to 5.20p (2018: 5.00p), a rise of 4%
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Fabric Division sales flat at £71.15m (2018: £71.11m), and down by 1.7% on constant currency basis. US sales down 2.1%, UK sales down 1.9% and European sales down 0.9%
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Decorating Division sales increased by 1.4% to £12.50m (2018: £12.33m), due to a number of major projects completing during the year
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David Green, Chief Executive, said:
“During the last year we experienced increasingly challenging trading conditions in most of our major markets. This trend has continued in the first twelve weeks of the current year and we expect trading to remain difficult.
“Our Decorating Division delivered an exceptional performance due to the completion of several significant contracts and we expect activity to return to more normal levels this year.
“The Group has a strong balance sheet with net cash of £9.5 million and we believe we are well placed to take advantage of any improvement in trading conditions in our major markets.”