FW Thorpe

Industrial and commercial lighting specialist FW Thorpe pleased the market by tripling pre-tax profits to £3.7m in the year to June. Thorpe lifted operating profits from £1m to £3.5m on turnover up 11.5% to £33m. Chairman Andrew Thorpe says the company achieved this significant margin improvement in the face of vigorous technical and price competition partly because of reduced losses at its Sugg lighting division, one of the prime contributors to 2001-02's poor performance. There have been redundancies and other savings and rearrangements at Sugg, which Thorpe hopes will lead to further improvements. Thorlux Lighting, the company's biggest division, fared better, pushing operating profits up 55% as orders rose 17% and winning its first road tunnel lighting project. Thorpe's Mackwell Electronics arm produced 'record' sales and profits. Elsewhere, the Compact Lighting and Philip Payne operations made satisfactory progress. Andrew Thorpe, who recently replaced the long-serving Colin Brangwin in the chair, says the current financial year started 'encouragingly' but warns 'it is always difficult to forecast what the rest of the year may bring'. Hold.

Sector: General Industrials

Companies: F W Thorpe

Market cap: £20m

PE Forecast: n/a

Share price: 171.5p

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