Co Tyrone manufacturing company Keystone Lintels made over £5m in profit before tax in 2023 on revenue of over £70m, accounts have shown.
Keystone Lintels designs and manufactures steel lintels, which are building products used in construction which support brick walls. It is based in Cookstown.
Keystone Lintels was founded in 1989 by Sean Coyle, a building control officer who realised there was a gap in the Irish market for the provision of steel lintels.
The company’s 2023 accounts, which were filed last month, show that it continued to stay profitable despite falling revenues and increased operating expenses.
It reported an 8.9% fall in revenues from 2022-23, down from £77m to £70m.
But there was a proportionately larger fall in the cost of sales, which dropped 17.7% from £49m to £39m.
However the company’s operating expenses also increased notably, going up by 17% from £21m to £25m.
The firm employed more on average over 2023, with 417 employees as opposed to 2022’s figure of 397. Employee costs stayed fairly static at just over £16m.
Taken altogether, Keystone Lintels made a profit before tax of £5.7m, a 10% decrease from the £6.4m they made in 2022.
The company paid a dividend of £4m to shareholders, a slight fall from the £4.5m dividend given out the prior year.
The directors’ report which precedes the accounts’ financial statements says that “both the year end financial position and the financial performance for the year were as expected.”
It continues that the company’s directors, “expect that the company’s recent financial performance will be sustained for the foreseeable future.”
The strategic report lists the company’s main risks and uncertainties as “controlling raw material costs and maintaining sales levels.”
Keystone Lintels has grown dramatically in the past three and a half decades into a group of over 18 businesses which operate from over 25 sites across Ireland, the UK and nations in continental Europe. Mr Coyle’s sons Sean Óg and Owen are directors in Keystone Lintels.
The parent of Keystone Lintels, the Sycamore Avenue Company, was ranked at 44 on the Belfast Telegraph’s Top 100 Companies in NI for 2024 in partnership with Grant Thornton.
That parent company registered a £11.5m pre-tax profit in 2023 on a revenue of over £145.4m. It employed 969 people last year.