Sales at building materials group Kingspan rose 10 per cent to €7.6 billion in the first nine months of the year, the company said in a trading update on Monday.
The Cavan-based multinational, led by Gene Murtagh, said third quarter sales rose 16 per cent year on year, mainly due to underlying sales growth of 12 per cent.
In the update, the company has forecast it will deliver a full-year trading profit in the region of €1.15 billion, which would mark an improvement of 20 per cent on last year’s performance.
Kingspan added the company’s strong backlog and pipeline would likely lead to trading profits in the region of €1.47 billion next year – growth of almost 28 per cent – “assuming our end-markets remain relatively stable”.
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“Whilst end-markets have their obvious challenges, the global backlog is ahead year on year,” the company said.
Further details in the trading update showed Kingspan’s insulated building envelopes sales rose by 4 per cent in the first nine months and by 8 per cent in the third quarter.
“As ever, there is considerable variability in sector and territory performances with our vast array of addressable applications around the world contributing positively overall,” Kingspan’s statement said.
The company said its majority non-residential end-market exposure was “relatively stable overall”, while residential markets remained subdued for the most part.
It added the pace of activity in the Americas region had picked up since midyear and performance in continental Europe had been “positive overall”, with activity softer in France in recent months, and the Middle East market “resilient”.
Kingspan’s unit Advnsys, which is focused on supplying an international data centre boom with bespoke critical infrastructure, recorded a 41 per cent increase in sales in the first nine months of the year, with third quarter sales up 54 per cent year-on-year.
The company said its order intake reached €2.7 billion in the year-to-date to the end of September, more than double that of the same period last year.
“We are experiencing an ever-increasing wave of inbound inquiries and continue to roll out capacity and associated supply chain resilience as rapidly as possible to meet demand,” the company said.
It added that activity at a new production facility in Arkansas “has ramped up considerably” and a new facility in Kentucky entered production in June. Kingspan has plans for further developments, in Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America, some of which are already under way with others still at the planning stage.
In August, Kingspan announced the acquisition of BMC Manufacturing Group, a data centre-focused group, in a landmark deal worth up to €900 million. Kingspan’s trading update said the deal was completed at the end of September and it has begun integration of the business into the group.
