Swiss cement company Holcim Ltd sees net profits jump 67%

From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!

Monday, May 2, 2005

Swiss cement firm Holcim Ltd. today reported that net profits jumped by 67% in the first quarter. The company which has operations in over 70 countries revealed that first quarter profits were 169m Swiss francs (€110m; US$141m) up from 101m Swiss Francs last year.

Despite what appears to be a large rise in profits, sales actually fell to 2.7bn Swiss francs — a drop of 1.1 percent. The jump in net profits was largely due to a change in accountancy methods. Operating profits rose just 10% to 411m Swiss francs. This small rise in operating profits was largely due to a major price increase in mature markets such as the US, enabled by strong demand in the marketplace.

Holcim was founded in 1912 in Holderbank, Canton Aargau, Switzerland. Today it employs 46,000 people worldwide and produces over 145m tons of cement annually. It has has recently acquired British- based Aggregate Industries PLC, and gained a controlling interest in India's No. 2 cement player, Associated Cement Companies Ltd.

Holcim Ltd. is the world's second-largest cement maker, beaten in size only by Lafarge, a French giant which employs over 77,000 people and sold almost US$20bn worth of building materials last year.

References

• Yahoo Biz page for Holcim
• Hoovers.com page for Holcim
• Holcim website
  

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable. Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators. Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections. Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.