Kingspan PLC (LON:KGP) has predicted a 58% jump in profits this year and said inflation was rampant throughout the building sector.
“Raw material inflation has continued at record levels, a situation which is ongoing and expected to continue through the summer months at least,” the Ireland-based business said in an update.
The building materials group, which has been heavily criticised in the Grenfell Tower disaster inquiry, said trading in most key markets was strongly ahead of the first half of 2020 and also the first half of 2019.
“We reported in April that we had a strong order backlog at that point and this has grown further in the period since.
“We expect sales in the first half of 2021 to be in the region of €2.9bn (H1 2020 €2.073bn; H1 2019 €2.24bn) and trading profit in the region of €315mln (H1 2020 €200mln; H1 2019 €230mln), albeit with the month of June still to complete.
In February, Kingspan announced said it was overhauling its insulation board business in the UK after the Grenfell Tower disaster.
The group has repeatedly apologised for what it says were shortcomings in employee conduct by the UK arm, which supplied insulation board used at the tower block that caught fire in June 2017 killing 72 people.