Superyacht painting and maintenance group GYG PLC (LON:GYG) has blamed the rich and famous spending more time in the Caribbean as one of the reasons why it now expects to make a loss this year.
The AIM company said trading has “proved challenging” over the past few months, so much so that full-year results will be “significantly below current market expectations”.
Dividend axed
GYG now expects to swing to an underlying loss of €1.2mln for the 12 months to the end of December on revenue of €44.0mln, compared with a profit of €7.2mln and revenue of €62.6mln last year.
Bosses have, perhaps unsurprisingly, axed the dividend, although they did promise to bring it back as soon as they could.
Among the reasons given for the sharp drop-off in performance was owners spending more time in the Caribbean this year, given the hurricane disruption in the region in 2017.
That means fewer yachts have been dropping into its various shipyards throughout northern Europe.
On top of that, a number of projects which had been planned for this year have been pushed back, while one of its shipyards has been closed for annual maintenance.
GYG did highlight a couple of “important” new build contracts as well as a number of other project wins, which should mean it enters 2019 with a strong order book of €31.3mln.
That didn’t float investors’ boats though, with the stock slumping more than a third to 43p.