It’s results season and the past week has been a mixed bag for Irish-listed companies. In many ways, the big names releasing annual results in the past few days have revealed what the new normal means for their businesses.

Global investment in infrastructure is up, and so are CRH’s revenue and profits. Bank of Ireland’s share price fell, not because its results were bad, but because the runaway growth in its profits driven by rising interest income is slowing down, as Sean explained. 

Inflation, now estimated to have fallen to 2.2 per cent in annual HICP terms by the CSO in February, is becoming less of a factor for these companies. It is clear, however, that the ones able to insulate themselves from price volatility, like Glanbia, are doing well.

Irish housing policy might at long last be finding its feet, with purely private development refocusing on houses while apartment building is generally turning into a partnership between developers and the State. This was clear in the performance of Glenveagh.

Sean’s analysis showed how the company has been getting more profitable as it retreats from its own apartment projects to focus on suburban housing estates. Meanwhile, Glenveagh reported a further boost from interest by the Land Development Agency (LDA) in its urban, more apartment-friendly sites.

The story was similar at Cairn Homes, whose results announcement and outlook highlighted expansion fuelled by the twin tracks of private demand for houses and Government funding for apartments. “We are also now a well-established delivery partner for State-supported entities including the LDA, approved housing bodies and local authorities, who urgently require delivery of new apartment developments situated close to multi-modal transport hubs, for social and affordable rental homes,” its chief executive Michael Stanley said.

It was refreshing to hear Stanley on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland praise the new planning regime for large-scale residential developments (LRD), only for his Aer Lingus counterpart Lynne Embleton to come on the same programme and slam planning rules on the passenger cap at Dublin Airport as a threat to the recovery apparent in her airline’s own results. One reassuring constant in the vagaries of Irish business amid widespread uncertainty is that planning will always be a hot talking point.

Uniphar, McCauley and the ECB

Amid the past week’s wave of PLC results, one company stood out for me on Tuesday. Uniphar, the Dublin-headquartered multinational active across the global pharmaceutical supply chain, grew both its revenue and operating profit by over 20 per cent in 2023. The period coincided with the integration of McCauley Pharmacy, the retail group of 34 pharmacies it acquired at the end of 2022.

Sean predicted at the time that the €50 million deal would be profitable because Uniphar had the scale to leverage its efficient logistics and technology capabilities across a larger network of retail pharmacies after the acquisition, while McCauley on its own could generate that efficiency. It was a rare deal where a good Irish business was joining a larger, even better Irish business rather than being snapped up by a multinational or a private equity buyer overseas.

It has worked. The supply chain and retail division of Uniphar, which is its largest business and covers medicines distribution and retail in Ireland, increased its profit margin. This was on the back of growth in revenue to exceed €1.7 billion. The division’s performance was “enhanced by the impact of the McCauley acquisition,” Uniphar reported.

The McCauley deal, however, was debt-funded. This increase in borrowings, at the time finance costs were skyrocketing, tripled Uniphar’s interest bill last year. This cost has cancelled out the higher operating profits achieved thanks to the acquisition and to progress elsewhere in the group. 

The bottom line, expressed in earnings per share, ended up slightly lower than 2022’s and investors were unimpressed, depressing Uniphar’s share price for the rest of the week.

This is one example among many of the potential currently being subdued by high interest rates. Should the European Central Bank lower the cost of borrowing in the coming months, as many forecasters expect, solid businesses like Uniphar, which saw their otherwise sound strategies caught up in the rate rises of late 2022 and 2023, could unleash a wave of profits on their shareholders.

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Elsewhere this week, Tom explored the expanding podcast business of Mediahuis Ireland across two in-depth interviews. The first was with Sunday World journalist Nicola Tallant, whose podcast Crime World attracts over a million monthly listeners. Mediahuis Ireland’s chief executive Peter Vandermeesch then explained how the publisher intends to generate profit from audio shows like Tallant’s.

Sinead leveraged her unhealthy fascination for the world of fraud to isolate the steps in the pattern repeated by well-known fraudsters. It is striking how little they hide their wrongdoing, instead counting on people around them to become accustomed to ever-bigger fraudulent actions. And how the same brazenness leads to their downfall.

Francesca uncovered a side track in the court battle launched by journalists Aoife Moore and Allison Morris against former Sunday Independent columnist Eoghan Harris for allegedly defaming them on Twitter. The Court of Appeal has ruled that Moore and Morris are liable for undisclosed legal costs incurred by the social network now called X in the course of revealing the identities of accounts used to post the contested tweets. Francesca’s reporting explains how two journalists found themselves footing the legal bills of a large multinational.