LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - Morgan Advanced Materials reported an improved third quarter's trading thanks to currency changes, with sales in most parts of the business still down on last year.
On a constant currency basis, sales for the first nine months of the year were 1.9% lower than the same period a year ago, though this is an improvement on the 2.4% decline at the half-year stage.

The FTSE 250 engineering company said the trading conditions in the quarter were "in line with management expectations and unchanged overall from the outlook in our July trading statement" and that looking forward "expectations for the full year remain unchanged".

By segment, sales for the Thermal Products division were 0.3% lower than the prior year, with growth in Asia and Europe offset by a decline in the Americas, having been up 0.4% at constant currency in the first half of the year.

Sales at the Carbon and Technical Ceramics fell 3.6% on last year, with declines across all of the business units but an improvement from the 4.5% constant currency decline at the interim stage.

Composites & Defence Systems remained at a similar level to the prior year, as they were in the first half.

For the group as a whole, the book to bill ratio for the first nine months was 1.00.

At the end of October, the group arranged $112m and €60m of new debt via a US private placement to extend its debt maturity profile and repay existing debt and other general corporate purposes.

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