Engineering firm GKN has said it lifted annual profits as it continues to benefit from a recovery in global car production.
The Redditch-based company, which makes drive shafts for almost half of all new cars, reported a 4% rise in pre-tax profits for the year to December to £601 million - a performance in line with forecasts.
It said global car production increased 3.1% to 87.4 million vehicles, boosted by rises in output in China, the US and Europe.
GKN, which has around 10% of its 50,000 strong workforce in the UK, said its commercial aerospace unit grew by 4% while its military aircraft sales were broadly flat.
It added that sales at its Land Systems business were 10% down due to challenging agricultural equipment markets.
The engineer forecasts growth this year, with global light vehicle production set to lift by around 2% following increases in China and the US and flat output in Europe.
It forecasts commercial aircraft production will be strong, although military markets will decline.
Its aerospace business makes fuselage, fan blades and cockpit windshields from sites including Yeovil, Luton, Derby, Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight.
The group expects sales at its Land Systems unit will be lower in 2015 than last year as lower agricultural sales will offset a slight improvement in industrial markets. It adds this unit will undergo a £8 million restructuring charge in an effort to reduce costs.
The group's statutory pre-tax profit fell 54% to £221 million, although £232 million of this relates to foreign currency movements for forward contracts.
Chief executive Nigel Stein said: "We have continued to outperform our key markets and report good underlying financial results in spite of sterling's strength and some end market weakness, particularly in Land Systems.
"Looking forward we expect 2015 to be another year of growth."
Shares fell 3% today as Cantor Fitzgerald broker Andy Chambers added: "The outlook for the current year errs on the side of caution in our view."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article