Marshalls PLC sales fall 21% - trading update

It is obviously still a tough market place for one of the UK's leading landscape and building material supplier. Marshalls interim results reveals a 21% drop in first sales to £166 million (2008 £211 million).

The recent rights issue was completed successfully and the £34 receipt now shores up the balance sheet but Marshalls say that the outlook is far from certain: "sales demand remains uncertain with no clear pattern emerging."

It is my view that there is still going to be difficult times ahead and the commercial sector is especially vulnerable to a longer and much more severe downturn.

As you would expect from governments, who have injected massive amounts of cash into the World's financial system, their language tells of a widespread recovery. Yesterdays 2.9% fall on the S&P (seen by many as the leading index as a gauge of the real story) on the US jobs data has potentially revealed that the last three months or so have been a 'dead cat bounce'.

I have always maintained that after such a devastating and sustained fall on the stock markets that, despite the strong resurgent bounce, a test of the low of March is necessary to confirm the end of the recession.

This week the whole psyche changed. Investors will cash in profits taking markets into bearish territory once more as confidence subsides and money will sit on the side lines as trading stops are hit and markets fall further.

Only when there is a one hundred percent confidence in the worlds economies being strong enough to take the investment will there be a rush to invest.

From a landscaping perspective the focus must remain on the domestic market and family life but I fear Marshalls have planned poorly and reacted badly to much of the economic turbulence; commercial landscaping does not look like a winner in the short term.