- Pre-tax profit jumps over 50%
- Firm cites higher-margin orders
- Outstanding long-term returns
Precision engineering firm Goodwin (GDWN) was the standout performer by a country mile on a grey day for the UK market, posting a strong increase in six-month earnings and orders.
The shares, which were up 12% year-to-date head of today’s report, jumped as much as £12.40 or 18% to £80 before settling up £7.70 at £76.30.
REMARKABLE TRACK RECORD
For a metal-basher – and increasingly a plastics-basher, if there is such a thing – Goodwin has been a remarkable performer in stock market terms, the shares having gained more than 20,000% since listing in the mid-1990s.
The Stoke on Trent engineering business delivers precision-engineered parts and materials to a global client base across the aerospace, automotive, construction, defence, energy, mining and minerals processing and semiconductor industries.
For the half-year to the end of October, the company registered a 9% increase in turnover to £106 million but a 53% increase in trading pre-tax profit from £11.2 million to £17.1 million.
Meanwhile, the firm’s order book has grown by 11% over the course of the year from £266 million last December to £296 million today.
According to chairman Timothy Goodwin, the significant growth in both profitability and orders, both of which have more than doubled in the last three years, is primarily down to the foundry and machine shop’s success in securing and delivering ‘high-integrity products for the nuclear decommissioning and naval vessel markets’.
The firm also scored a notable success for its Duvelco specialist polymers unit, which supplies high-performance materials to the aerospace, automotive and chip-making sectors and according to Goodwin will become ‘a major contributor to the group's profitability in the years ahead’.
POSITIVE OUTLOOK
While the outlook for the second half of the year to April 2025 is ‘more of the same’, Goodwin highlighted the Easat Radar Systems business which has signed a ‘significant’ contract to supply two additional turnkey surveillance systems to an existing military customer in Southeast Asia, returning it to profitability.
The firm also has new specialist products such as a fire-extinguishing agent specifically designed for use with lithium-ion batteries, and with interest and adoption growing it has commissioned a new plant which will reduce production costs while giving the business greater control over order fulfilment.
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