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BUILDINGS MATERIAL COMPANY CRH has reported pre-tax profits of €711 million for last year, a climb of one third on the €534 million reported in 2010.
CRH – originally Cement Roadstone Holdings – saw sales revenue increase by 5 per cent to just over €18 billion in 2011.
The company said it cut costs by €154 million in 2011 through a cost reduction programme.
The company said it expects to continue to increase revenue and profit in 2012 as long as there aren’t any dramatic changes in the economy.
“Assuming no major economic or energy market dislocations, we expect to generate further like-for-like revenue growth in 2012 with the achievement of targeted price increases a key priority,” said chief executive Myles Lee.
“This combined with benefits from acquisitions completed in 2011 leads us to expect further progress in the year ahead”.
Last August the company had announced pre-tax profits of €95 million for the first six months of 2011, a rise of 280 per cent compared to the same period in 2010.
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Great news guys. Now get onto Hireland and pledge and give a few jobs.
@torpedo, their focus should not be on giving a few jobs, they should focus on continuation of their successful growth strategy, if they succeed jobs will follow.
They made a pre tax profit of 700 million. I think the can afford to hire one or two people.
It is that sort of attitude that leads to inefficiency and eventual ruin, you do not hire people just to sit on their arses.
‘Very challenging environment’ indeed. It’s a tough business building apartheid cement walls around Palestine, but some Irish firm has got to do it.
They are obviously working in a very challenging environment and there is still some way to go before new jobs will emerge. A profit of less than 4% on sales suggest that further cost cutting will be needed to remain competitive.
A challenging environment all right. Putting up Israel’s apartheid wall.
But its good for tricky Dicky Bruton’s portfolio.
Much of these profits have been made on the back of an illegal price-fixing cartel operating in the.concrete and cement industries. Ongoing legal actions taken by Framus Ltd and Goode Concrete serve to demonstrate the extent of the crippling stranglehold CRH have over many small businesses in this country. Compounding this is the negligence of the Competition Authority who steadfastly refuse to investigate the industry despite the severity of the allegations laid at the door of CRH. The term Regulatory Capture comes to mind here.
CRH operate a cartel with others in the cement, concrete and tarmac markets in Ireland. They have been selling concrete below average variable cost in the Dublin concrete market and abused their dominant position in their upstream cement and aggregates markets by doing so. This is illegal and criminal but they are being protected by the successive Governments due to a term called political and regulatory capture.
CRH has been found to have operated a price fixing cartel in Northern Ireland between 1985 and 1992. CRH was fined by the European Commission in 1994 for conducting a pan European cartel. In 2007 CRH was fined €530,000 for obstructing an antitrust investigation and destroying evidence. In 2009 CRH was fined €25 million for participation in a price fixing cartel in Poland.
CRH is doing monumental damage to the Irish economy by overcharging for cement and tarmac and using this money to subsidise a corporate eviction strategy which is costing the economy jobs.
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