saferoads get's media attention

Wednesday, September 04, 2013 by Proactive Investors

Saferoads Holdings continued to reduce losses and focus on margins operating in a tough infrastructure funding environment

Saferoads Holdings continued to reduce losses and focus on margins operating in a tough infrastructure funding environment

Saferoads Holdings (ASX:SRH) has continued to reduce losses from its road safety solutions business from a previous net loss of $9.219 million to $1.389 million in the year to 30 June 2013.

Saferoads has been impacted by a tough operating environment with the slowdown in government road infrastructure funding (with the pending Federal election) and seasonal factors have negatively impacted the second half.

This was on sales of $24.3 million, compared with $35.3 million for the previous year as work ceased on the Energy Absorption Systems Inc. contract, a re-structured Civil Services offering nationally and focus on cost cutting.

Gross margins held their ground proportionately with effort put into enhancing the trading margin.

All this enabled cash holdings at year-end of $2.241 million and after repaying $2.6 million, or 31% of core bank debt.

This was done from the $2.666 million of proceeds received from the sale of non-core assets; including the sale and leaseback of the head office site in Drouin, Victoria, and the sale of the Traffic Signals product portfolio during the year.

Pockets of demand were found for core products such as our SnaplocTM guide posts, Omni-stopTM impact-absorbing bollards, traffic calming solutions including speed humps and wheel-stops, and the proprietary impact-absorbing Safepole product.

Looking ahead, Saferoads is aiming to rebuild market share and with a renewed focus on improving margins.