Lavendon revenues down 10% but signs of growth return

Lavendon Group's revenues declined by 10% in the five months to 31 May, excluding used equipment sales, said the company in an interim trading statement.

The decline in the UK was 7% and Lavendon said volumes were higher than last year and that rental rates were "showing early signs of improvement" with recent weeks even starting to show year-on-year growth.

Revenues in Germany fell by 16% in the five months (which represents a slowing down of the rate of decline from the 20% fall in the first quarter of the year), and the combined revenues of France and Belgium grew by 5%, with France in particular making "strong progress".

Spanish revenues declined by 22% and revenues in the Middle East were down 13%, although take out sales of equipment and the fall reduces to 8%.

Lavendon said the rate of year-on-year revenue decline had been reducing on a monthly basis throughout the five months; "Whilst market conditions remain difficult, a number of the Group's operations have encouragingly returned to generating year on year revenue growth in recent weeks.

"Current trading indicates that this trend will continue over the balance of the year, and whilst the timing of this recovery will undoubtedly weight the Group's profitability significantly more towards the second half of the year than previously, the Board continues to believe that it will achieve its expectations for the year as a whole."