From the bottom of the league to the top.
Revenue in the Iberian region grew 14.2 per cent year-on-year, the manufacturer said on Wednesday. Other decent performances came from the UK and Ireland, where they were up 8.3 per cent.
That was in sharp contrast to Asia-Pacific, where sales declined 4.1 per cent – a result, Geberit said, of the “very weak market environment in China.”
It wasn’t so long ago that countries like Spain, Portugal and Ireland were markets in decline – particularly so as overbuilding in the good years before 2007 was a big part of their problems. But those economies, and that of the UK, are now the fastest-growing in Europe.
Overall the Swiss group reported sales of SFr2.59bn last year, a 24.2 per cent rise year-on-year mainly attributable to its acquisition of Finnish rival Sanitec for $1.4bn early in the year. In the fourth quarter sales rose 32.4 per cent to SFr621.1m.