Grafton snaps up two firms

GRAFTON Group has gone on a pre-Christmas spending spree, snapping up a builders merchant and a plumbing business.

Grafton, which also owns the Woodies and Atlantic Homecare DIY chains, said yesterday that it had acquired Dublin-based Davies, a plumbing, drainage and heating products business, and Garvey’s Builders Merchants.

Grafton did not disclose the price of either takeover, but it will mean a multi-million payday for the owners of both companies.

Grafton said Davies is a leading specialist plumbing, heating and drainage business trading from two locations in Dublin area. It has two quality retail bathroom showrooms.

The plumbing and heating division principally services new building projects in the commercial and domestic markets. Davies, which has been in business for more than 70 years, has annual sales of nearly €38 million and gross assets of €24.8m.

Roscommon-based Garvey’s Builders Merchants specialised in the repair, maintenance and improvement (RMI) and residential construction markets. Its annual turnover is in the region of €10m.

In a statement, Grafton said the two companies were strong in the markets and are a good geographic fit with group.

Shares in Grafton gained almost 2% yesterday to close at €8.45.

Brokers said the deals with add around 7% in turnover to Grafton’s Irish operations in a full year.

“Clearly the deals will have no impact on the current year but at first glance we think that they could add around 1 cent to earnings in FY 2006,” Davy Stockbrokers said.