There seems to be no stopping the UK’s two leading china manufacturers, Portmerion (PMP) whose preliminary 2015 results are announced today and Churchill China (CHH), whose preliminaries are due on the 24th March.
2015 was Portmeirion’s 7th consecutive year of record growth with group revenue up by 11.9% and profit before tax at an all time high after a rise of 13.6p. Total dividends for 2015 are to be increased by 13.2% to 30p. making an average annual increase of 10.7% over each of the last 7 years. cash balances for the year nearly doubled to £11.1m.
2016 has started well with the first two months ahead of last year.
Portmeirion’s leading brands are well know household names, Spode, Royal Worcester, Portmeirion and Pimpernel. Its two main markets are the US and the UK, which together account for nearly 60% of sales, whilst the company accepts that the EU is virtually unexploited, producing only 3% of total sales. The only market to suffer a slowdown was S. Korea where the company has been entrenched for 20 years but saw fall due to weakness in the economy.
The shares have shown exceptional strength so far this year having risen from 933p to 1081p. Over the past 7 years they have shown continuous growth from 110p in 2009, save for a blip in 2011. This morning the share price has added another 50p to 1130p in response to the results
Churchill China announced in a trading update in January that trading in the second half year had been ahead of earlier expectations with the levels of growth achieved in the first six months of 2015 being sustained in the second half year. The Board expected that operating performance will be ahead of current market estimates and well ahead of 2014.
Churchill’s share price has climbed from 517p on the 25th August to today’s 757p, a rise of nearly 50% in just over 6 months.
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