CRH expects the euro zone's economic problems to deepen a slide in sales in the second half of 2012, preventing it from raising profits despite a recovery of US construction markets.
The building materials group today reported pre-tax profits of €117m for the six months to the end of June.
This is an increase of 23% on the €95m posted the same time last year. EBITDA eased by 1% to €568m from €574m.
Revenues for the six months rose by 5% to €8.588 billion from €8.166 billion on the back of favourable currency movements.
CRH said it was maintaining its dividend per share at 18.5 cent per share. Its shares closed sharply lower at 5.4% in Dublin trade this evening.
The company, which employs 79,000 people around the world, said that its Americans operations had a positive start to the year.
But it added that trading in Europe was badly affected by the very severe weather conditions in February and by deteriorating confidence due to the euro zone crisis.
It said that sales were up 20% in its Americans operations to €4 billion, while EBITDA jumped 26% to €216m.
In Europe, sales were down 5% to €4.6 billion while EBITDA fell by 13% to €352m.
During the six month period, CRH spent a total of €256m on 18 acquisitions and investments, up from a figure of €163m the same time in 2011.
It said that problems in the euro zone, which have intensified over the past six months, continue to erode confidence in the European economy.
CRH chief executive Myles Lee said that the current trends in its Americas operations suggest that the benign early weather in the US has resulted in some pull-forward of construction demand. But after good early momentum, the pace of economic growth has tempered over recent months, he added.
''Against this backdrop, and with additional restructuring costs as we make further adjustments to our European cost base, we expect, subject to normal seasonal weather patterns and no major financial or energy market dislocations and with the benefits of a stronger US Dollar, that EBITDA for the year as a whole will be similar to last year's level of €1.656 billion,'' Mr Lee said.
On Ireland, CRH said the company continued to face very challenging market conditions as Irish construction activity again fell sharply. It said that while it continued to focus on cost reductions, trading was negatively impacted by a seven week strike in its cement operations.
