Ireland's largest publicly quoted company, CRH, has said the third quarter of this year saw much lower growth in its US operations and a higher rate of decline in Europe.
In an interim management statement, the building materials giant reported a decline in like-for-like group sales of 3 per cent for the quarter, and 1 per cent for the nine months to September 30th.
Sales revenue for the last quarter was 1 per cent ahead of 2011, when it reported revenues of €5.3 billion.
Cumulative group revenue to the end of September was 4 per cent ahead of the €13.5 billion reported last year.
The company said mild weather in November/December 2011 in both Europe and North America contributed to a strong fourth quarter Ebitda (Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) outcome.
"For 2012, the recent major storm activity in the eastern United States, which is likely to result in significant reconstruction work that should benefit 2013, has caused significant disruption to our materials operations in the region over the past two weeks," it said.
"With this negative short-term impact, and the ongoing weakness in certain major European markets, we anticipate that Ebitda for the last three months of the year will be below 2011."
