Michelmersh Brick Holdings – Final Results

Michelmersh Brick Holdings Plc (AIM: MBH), the specialist brick manufacturer, reports its preliminary results for the year ended 31 December 2024.

Financial Highlights:

Statutory results	31st Dec 2024	31st Dec 2023	Change
Revenue	£70.1m	£77.3m	(9.3%)
Gross margin	35.8%	38.9%	(3.1%)
Operating profit	£8.2m	£12.3m	(33.3%)
Profit before tax	£8.0m	£12.5m	(36.0%)
Basic earnings per share	6.59p	10.44p	(36.9%)
Cash from operations	£10.2m	£13.6m	(25.0%)
Net cash	£6.0m	£11.0m	(45.5%)
Dividend per share	4.60p	4.50p	2.2%
Adjusted results*
Adjusted EBITDA1	£14.0m	£17.8m	(21.3%)
Adjusted operating profit	£10.1m	£13.7m	(26.3%)
Adjusted profit before tax	£9.9m	£13.8m	(28.3%)
Adjusted earnings per share	8.18p	11.91p	(31.3%)

Strategic and Operational Highlights:

• Resilient performance in 2024, with revenue down 9.3%, reflective of product mix and a highly competitive pricing environment.

• Despatch volumes broadly stable over the last 12 months and in line with management expectations.

• Stable market share from FY23 demonstrating the quality and customer reach of our products

• Core and consistent discipline of maintaining a quality forward order book supported by order intake running ahead of full manufacturing capacity throughout the year.

• Continued focus on appropriate portfolio pricing with our customers.

• Proactive approach to our sustainability initiatives with £5.6 million of capex invested in efficiency improvements across our manufacturing base, ahead of normalised run-rate.

• Active management of input costs on a risk-based approach with a more balanced energy hedging policy.

• Strong balance sheet in challenging markets with cash of £6.0 million and an undrawn £20 million borrowing facility, underpins our financial resilience to deliver against our capital allocation framework.

• Final dividend per share of 3.00p resulting in full year dividend of 4.60p, up 2.2% on 2023, demonstrating commitment to our dividend policy and confidence in our outlook.

Outlook

• Positive momentum in our order intake from 2024 continued into Q1 2025.

• Focus on maintaining a well-balanced forward order book, with well communicated and collaborative mid-single digit price increase at the end of Q1 2025 to offset increases in our cost base, expected to support demand across our diverse end market customer base.

• Medium-term fundamental market drivers are encouraging and the business is well positioned, but cautious customer sentiment regarding affordability including the elevated interest rate environment continues to impact the expected timing of a market recovery.

Commenting on the results, Tony Morris, Chair of Michelmersh Brick Holdings PLC, said:

“The Group has been able to deliver a resilient performance once again this year. This is despite the long trough in activity levels in the wider construction industry, measured by the impact on brick despatch volumes, which have declined by over 30% since the end of 2022. Michelmersh’s outperformance of this broader industry decline has been achieved by growing market share in 2023 and then maintaining those levels in 2024. The team has remained focused on ensuring the continuity of supply of our high-quality portfolio, active management of input costs, alongside delivering a year of significant capital improvement programmes.

“We expect the fundamental resilience of our business model to support performance going forward, as we continue to trade in challenging market conditions. Against a backdrop of customer concerns about affordability and the elevated interest rate environment, the expected timeline for market recovery continues to face delays.  However, with the strength of our balance sheet and the significant investments made in our facilities during the year, we are well positioned for 2025 and beyond.”

^*The Directors believe that adjusted measures provide a more useful comparison of business trends and performance. Adjusted results exclude exceptional costs associated with acquisitions and aborted corporate transactions and the amortisation of acquired intangibles. The term adjusted is not defined under IFRS and may not be comparable with similarly titled measures used by other companies. ^.Adjusted performance results are reconciled with statutory results below.

¹ EBITDA is defined as earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.