Leading UK rental companies Baldwins and Hewden were both able to find good news to report soon after seeing their respective London stock exchange share prices collapse on the back of profits warnings.
Baldwins, whose shares have fallen from a year high of 471p to 216p last month, announced that it had secured a $650,000 contract in the USA at a DuPont chemical plant in Orange, Texas. Baldwins’ US subsidiary Phillips Crane & Rigging will remove old columns each weighing several hundred tonnes.
Significantly, the contract win was publicised by Baldwins’ financial public relations agents rather than its own marketing team.
Lifting is Baldwins’ sole business; Hewden hires out the full range of construction equipment and tools. Hewden’s share price has fallen from a high of 117p down to 62p last month. Its good news is that it has signed an agreement with the national maintenance department of UK chemicals company BOC to supply all its plant and equipment requirements for two years.
In September Hewden reported a 23% fall in group profits for the first six months of the year and warned that its full year profits would be down further. Profits fell most sharply in cranes and access where pressure on rates is intense. The man who now has to sort out Hewden’s problems is Paul Jarvis, who joins the company as chief executive next month, to replace Alistair Napier who left in May. Jarvis joins from engineering group Charter where he was chief executive of the subsidiaries Howden Process Compressors and Howden Industrial. Hewden’s directors are now conducting a strategic review of the group’s activities.
With Baldwins and Hewden failing to satisfy the financial markets, and the Initial GWS mobile crane business still up for sale, the UK crane hire business is going firmly out of fashion.
