Grafton Group
Revenue £1.02bn Dividend 3¾p
Halfway figures from Grafton Group are, on the face of it, superb. Like-for-like sales at its UK builder’s merchants, about three quarters of the business, were up by 8.2 per cent. In Ireland, which is recovering from a much lower base, they rose by 13.1 per cent.
Revenues were 11 per cent ahead, but operating profits were up 62 per cent to £50.6 million. The halfway dividend is raised by 25 per cent to 3¾p. There are not a lot of companies that can bring in a set of figures like that.
Look deeper and there are three conjoined factors to Grafton’s advantage, although these in no way detract from that performance: the markets it is in are improving