Lavendon's exceptionals turn profit into loss
Preliminary results for 2009 from powered access rental giant Lavendon Group show revenue falling from almost £260m to around £227m with pre-tax operating profit more than halving from above £30m to less than £14m.
However, exceptional and amortisation costs and currency fluctuations turned the operating profit into a pre-tax loss of almost £48m. These included almost £31m of goodwill write-down with another £12m being written off asset values.
At the operating level all parts of the group were profitable although all but the Middle East business suffered falls in revenue and underlying profit. In the UK revenue was down by almost a quarter to £106.4m with profit almost halved at £12.4m.
The company's Spanish operation was also badly hit with its operating profit almost eliminated while the Middle East business increased turnover by almost 40% (to £32.1m) while profit increased by over 50% to £11.4m.
While the company is not predicting a recovery in 2010, it is not expecting a further significant decline.
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