Grafton Group felt the need to flag up the risk of a UK vote to leave the EU with its last set of results in March 2016, at a time when such an outcome looked unlikely, saying that it would have little effect. That did not stop the shares being hit heavily after the vote. They rose 50p to 657p on the 2016 results yesterday, which came in ahead of expectations.
Once again, the company is playing down the effect of the vote on its Irish building merchants business, despite the UK experiencing a weak performance in the summer amid the general uncertainty. The outlook in the UK is not particuarly bright, even if the fourth quarter showed some return to growth at about 4.6