Fitzwilton sees losses narrow to €3.8m

Fitzwilton, the privately-held investment vehicle owned by Sir Anthony O'Reilly and his brother-in-law Peter Goulandris, saw pretax losses narrow slightly to €3.8 million in 2005, according to its annual report and accounts for the year.

Chief executive David Roxburgh said the company had turned a corner and would be free of annual interest charges of €11 million from next year following the repayment of a €115 million bond earlier this month.

The company repaid the high-yielding bond, which was issued in 1996 to fund businesses formerly owned by the Fitzwilton Group, from the cash and assets on its balance sheet. As a result, the group now has no bank or other borrowings on its balance sheet.

Mr Roxburgh said the company was now free to concentrate on the organic growth of its trading entities, which he said were performing extremely well in the year to date.

Fitzwilton's directors are forecasting operating profits from the trading entities of €4.9 million this year, compared to €3.1 million in 2005, an increase of nearly 60 per cent. For 2007, the directors are projecting a further increase of 57 per cent to €7.7 million. Last year's €3.8 million pretax loss was an improvement on 2004's loss of €4.2 million, which in turn had been a reduction on the €8.8 million loss recorded in 2003.

The group recorded an operating profit before exceptional items of €993,000 in 2005, down on 2004's operating profit of €1.48 million. Fitzwilton said the main reason for this decrease was a fall in rental income to €638,000 from €1.34 million as a result of the disposal of a number of its investment properties in Northern Ireland. Turnover at the group increased from €32.7 million to €35.1 million.

Fitzwilton's main operation, the light manufacturing group Rennicks, increased operating profits by 18 per cent. The division has exclusive rights from a US company to sell and rent its Portable Changeable Message Signs (PCMS) in Ireland and Britain. The signs, which give real time information to motorists, are used for traffic calming and incident management.

Mobile Traffic Solutions, a newly formed trading subsidiary, has become the first and so far only company to be approved by the UK Highways Agency on new performance standards for PCMS units in the UK.