Ardagh quarterly profits up €4m
In a quarterly update for investors, the group — according to the Bloomberg news service — said profits increased by just under €4 million in the second quarter of the year to €36m — up from €32.4m for the same period last year.
In its statement, the company said: “We continue to see strong inflation in many of our key raw material, especially tin plate and energy. In the second half of 2011, we do not expect to recover all of this inflation.”
The privately-owned group, which expressed its intention to float this year, is scheduled to brief investors in a more detailed manner, on its up-to-date performance today.
Ardagh has grown significantly through acquisition in recent times. This year, alone, it has bought big on more than one occasion. In January, it bought international packaging group, Impress Co-operative for €1.7 billion, in a deal described as “transformational” for the Dublin-headquartered business. That deal saw the business change its name from Ardagh Glass to the Ardagh Group.
That was followed up, in March, by the completion of its €125m takeover of Italian packaging business, Finanziaria di Partecipazioni Industriali (Fi.Par); a move which significantly increased Ardagh’s presence in Italy and gave it a foothold in the Greek market, where Fi.Par had a notable market share.
Back in May, Ardagh announced plans to float through a listing in the US, sometime in the third quarter of 2011, “subject to regulatory clearance and market conditions”.
No further update has been issued by the company on the matter, but it has been estimated that an IPO would value the group at somewhere between €2bn and €3bn.
