‘Substantial improvement’ for Weir
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The Weir Group, best known for its industrial pumps, has announced that its results for 2008 are likely to be better than expected and to show a substantial improvement on last year.
In a trading update, the company which is headed by chief executive Mark Selway (pictured), said its financial performance in the 22 weeks ending 30 May 2008 continued to benefit from generally strong market conditions, particularly in the global mining market. There had also been a better than expected recovery in Weir’s African minerals operations and the group benefited from reduced interest charges resulting from lower US interest rates associated with the company's recent acquisitions.
As a result, the group now expected pre-tax profits for the full year to be substantially ahead of 2007 and at the upper end of current market estimates.
Weir used the update to announce a change to its existing organisation and reporting structure which it said reflected its increasing focus on the mining, oil & gas and power & industrial markets.
The Group has been reorganised into three divisions: Oil & Gas, Power & Industrial and Minerals reflecting the sector focus. The company’s services businesses have been integrated into each of these divisions to provide “a complete end to end offering for our customers”.
The range of analysts' forecasts for Weir’s pre-tax profits for 2008 were from £142.5 million to £163.7 million with a consensus of £153.3 million.
