Kingspan Group PLC on Friday said its first-quarter sales improved, despite a ‘challenging environment’, and the building materials supplier proposed delisting from the London Stock Exchange.

Kingspan said sales in the first quarter of 2023 neared €2 billion, up 4% against the prior year but down 3% on an underlying basis. Looking forward, it added it expects to deliver a trading profit of just over €400 million for the first half of 2023, possibly down around 7.9% from €434.2 million in the first six months of 2022.

‘The group’s trading outlook is relatively short dated as has been the case over the last year or so. The second quarter is a demanding comparative, perhaps less so on order intake which petered out in Q2 2022 after a strong first quarter,’ Kingspan added.

Kingspan also announced that, following a review of its listing arrangements, it backs delisting from the London Stock Exchange. The move needs shareholder approval.

Kingspan said share dealings on the LSE is ‘negligible’ as a percentage of its total trading. Kingspan added it remains ‘committed’ to its primary listing on the main market of the Euronext Dublin, where the majority of its share trading takes place.

Shares in the company traded 1.4% higher at €61.62 each in London on Friday morning, giving it a market capitalisation of around €10.89 billion. In Dublin, the stock was up 1.9% at €61.78.

Kingspan’s departure would be somewhat of another blow for the London Stock Exchange.

It lost out on housing the initial public offering of Arm Ltd, a Cambridge, England-based computer chip designer owned by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp.

Arm ruled out a UK listing this year picking the US instead.

CRH PLC earlier this year announced it is planning to move its primary listing to the US. Plumbing and heating products supplier Ferguson PLC and miner BHP Group Ltd have similarly shifted their primary listings elsewhere in recent years.

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