Profits Four Per Cent Up

Gross trading profits earned in the financial year April 1965, to March 1966, by companies reporting to the Board of Trade in the third quarter of 1966, totalled £658m. - 4 per cent above the same companies' results a year earlier. The Board's journal reveals that for the accounting year 1965 as a whole, gross trading profit of the 1,670 companies received and analysed was 4 per cent higher than in 1964. That compared with an increase of 16 per cent between 1963 and 1964. The gross trading profit of all companies, as estimated quarter by quarter by the Central Statistical Office, for the 12 months ending December 1965 was just over 3 per cent above the previous year. An analysis of the accounts of quoted companies whose reports were received in the third quarter shows that of the 22 individual industry groups, 10 recorded profit increases over the previous year. Of the remainder, eight industries showed no change and four recorded falls in profits. The biggest increases were in the electrical engineering industry (up 15 ver cert), chemicals and allied industries (14 per cent), and textiles (12 per cent). Falls were noted in the food industries' trading profits (down 13 per cent), timber, furniture and associated industries (15 per cent), and comapnies in the shipbuilding and marine engineering fields made losses, the Board discloses. Gross income (trading profit plus investment and otner incomes) of all companies reporting up to the end of September 1966 rose from £2.956 m, in 1964 to £3,099 m. in 1965, an increase of 5 per cent. For companies reporting between July and September this year the rise was 4 per cent,