Victoria Group expects to complete further acquisitions ‘in the near future’ after due diligence was held up by pandemic travel restrictions.
The announcement came after it said it expected a record year for 2020/2021 with sales of more than £640m, up £18.5m, and EBITDA of at least £120m, up £2m for the year ended 3 April.
‘The trading outlook for the current FY22 financial year is very encouraging in terms of both revenue and margins. The group continues to experience strong, ongoing consumer demand across its key markets. Furthermore, housing transactions, a key 12-18 month leading indicator of flooring sales, are at very high levels – not only in the UK, but across our markets (more than 70% of the group’s earnings are now generated from outside the UK), which suggests demand will be maintained for some period,’ it says.
‘More importantly, the post-lockdown uplift in margin observed in the interim results published in November 2020 is structural due to completed synergy projects and therefore sustainable. There have been some increases in raw material prices in recent months, but the group has been able to successfully mitigate these. However, it clearly remains difficult to forecast accurately given the ongoing impact of, and uncertainty caused by, government actions in response to COVID-19 and therefore we will continue to keep re-instatement of formal earnings guidance under review and will comment further as soon as we feel it is prudent to do so.’
