Australia's Boral flags further hit to profit on rainfall, higher costs (updated)

Boral

18/05/2022 01:49

(Adds CEO's quote, shares)
    May 18 (Reuters) - Australia's top construction materials
maker Boral Ltd  BLD.AX  said on Wednesday that annual profit
may come in nearly a third below expectations as "extraordinary"
rainfall slowed sales and rising fuel costs trimmed margins.
    The Sydney-listed company already warned in March that heavy
rain across Australia's east coast, where most of the population
lives, would hurt sales volumes, and flagged pre-tax profit of
A$145 million to A$155 million for the year to end-June, from
A$140 million the previous year.  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL3N2VP0KR
    However, in a share-market filing, it said trading since
then had been "impacted by continuing exceptional rainfall and
inflationary cost pressures" and it now expected "additional
adverse impacts" to annual profit of about A$45 million.
    Two-thirds of the adverse impact was caused by heavy
rainfall, which has caused heavy flooding and shut down
construction in the states of New South Wales and Queensland,
the company said.
    The other third was caused by inflation, mostly energy
costs. The company added that it expected the elevated costs to
continue to the end of the financial year.
    "We are responding to this challenging operating environment
by implementing additional measures to mitigate the impact of
transport and fuel inflation alongside the already announced out
of cycle price increases, and accelerating our focus on costs,"
CEO Zlatko Todorcevski said in the statement.
    Boral shares were down 1.3% in morning trade, against a 1.2%
gain on the broader Australian market  .AXJO .
    
($1 = 1.4225 Australian dollars)

 (Reporting by Byron Kaye in Sydney and Indranil Sarkar in
Bengaluru; editing by Uttaresh.V)
 ((Indranil.Sarkar@thomsonreuters.com; Mobile:  +91
7022132226;))