Luxury products group Waterford Wedgwood today said trading remains difficult but the sales trend is improving as it reported an in-line pre-tax loss before goodwill of €14.3 million for the three months to March 31st.
The company said in March it would change the end of its financial year to March 31st from December 31st and therefore did today not provide comparisons to the quarterly figures.
The company made an operating loss before goodwill of €8.8 million on sales on sales of €207.2 million and a loss per share before goodwill of €1.81 cents.
Waterford Wedgwood said it is seeing signs of improvement, as worldwide sales in May equalled, for the first time since August 2001, the same month in the prior year and it expects improving earnings and cash performance as the year progresses.
It added that sales also showed an upwards trend compared with the final quarter of 2001.
AFP