By Anthony O. Goriainoff

Kingspan Group PLC on Friday said that 2020 pretax profit rose, and that although the year started well--with performance helped by the strong backlog of activity from 2020--it expects further significant increases in raw-material prices in early 2021.

The London-listed, Ireland-based building and insulation-materials company said the effort to recover these through price increases, although underway, will be a challenge.

"We can expect a degree of lag in the recovery of these cost increases. Whilst there can be limited certainty in the near-term, sentiment across our end markets remains positive overall," the company said.

Pretax profit was 459.7 million euros ($556 million) compared with EUR454.4 million for 2019, Kingspan said.

Trading profit rose 2% to EUR508.2 million.

Revenue fell to EUR4.58 billion from EUR4.66 billion the year before.

The board proposed a final dividend of 20.6 European cents a share compared with 13.0 European cents for 2019. The company didn't declare an interim dividend in 2020 due to the pandemic.

Write to Anthony O. Goriainoff at anthony.orunagoriainoff@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

02-19-21 0256ET