McBride forecasts 15% earnings beat amid spike in demand for cleaning products

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Cleaning products provider McBride upgraded its annual profit guidance as it continued to experience heightened demand for cleaning products, though off an earlier peak.

Adjusted pre-tax profit for the year through June was expected to be around 15% ahead of currently market expectations, the company said.

McBride said that since an announcement on 25 March, demand levels in its household business had moderated from a surge seen in many markets as countries went into lockdown.

However, it said demand levels still remained above run rate levels seen before March.

'These higher demand levels are evident in most of our major markets and apply mostly to surface cleaning and dishwashing products, with more limited impact in laundry products,' McBride said.

'Our teams have worked well to address the early challenges of staff shortages, material availability and distribution blockages and all factories are currently operating at more normal activity levels.'

'As anticipated in our March update, we have seen lower input pricing in this period although some of this benefit has been tempered by one off Covid-19 related operating costs.'

'The group's aerosols business is benefiting from sales of new hand sanitiser products and as a result will deliver a profit improvement in the final quarter, supported by investment in additional production capacity.'