Building materials group CRH has said the third quarter of the year saw much lower growth in its Americas operations and a higher rate of decline in Europe.
In an interim management statement, CRH said this resulted in a decline in like for like group sales of 3% for the quarter and 1% for the nine months to the end of September.
However, sales revenue for the quarter was 1% ahead of last year when it reported revenues of €5.3 billion.
Cumulative group revenue to the end of September is 4% ahead of the €13.5 billion reported last year.
The company said that while market conditions in Ireland and Spain remain very challenging, it said the impact of lower volumes and prices is being partly offset by the benefits from its ongoing restructuring efforts.
CRH said that Superstorm Sandy in the eastern US will likely result in significant reconstruction work that should benefit the firm next year. But it added that it caused significant disruption to its materials division in the region.
It said that with this negative short-term impact, and the ongoing weakness in certain major European markets, it expects that EBIDTA for the last three months of the year will below 2011's level.
The company said it expects to report full year EBITDA of about €1.6 billion, down slightly from the €1.65 billion reported in 2011. It added that both pre-tax profit and earnings per share, after impairment charges, will also be below last year's levels. It had reported pre-tax profits of €711m and earning per share of 82.6 cent last year.
CRH said that since the end of June, it has completed another eight deals which brings its year to date investment expenditure to €390m. The deals were broadly split between its Europe and Americas operations.
