The Management Board of AS VALMIERAS STIKLA ŠĶIEDRA (the ‘Company’, with registration no: 40003031676, legal address: Cempu iela 13, Valmiera, LV-4201), hereby acknowledges that the audited annual consolidated and standalone financial statements for the year 2018 will not be distributed by 30 April 2019 due to reasons described below.
P-D VALMIERA GLASS USA Corp., the majority-owned US subsidiary (‘US subsidiary’) of the Company, has recently received an additional information request from its sworn auditor as well as the sworn auditor for the Company in the course of auditing the US subsidiary. This relates to gaining independent expert opinions on the US subsidiary’s operations, which naturally require some time to complete.
Background: the US subsidiary consists of two physically-separated operations on the same property. The first is a needle matting facility which can operate as an independent enterprise (also previously referred to as ‘Phase 1’). The second is a vertically-integrated fibreglass yarn producing facility (also previously referred to as ‘Phase 2’).
As has been previously announced, the Phase 2 component of the US operations of the Group have taken a longer than expected time to reach expected output levels. Considering that by far the majority of the group’s investments in recent years have been directed towards Phase 2, the auditors have requested further information to ascertain asset values which should be recorded for the close of the 2018 accounts.
These industrial assets are rather unique and specialised as they represent the only large fibreglass yarn producer in the US. Thus a carefully-approached valuation is particularly warranted.
Management respects the auditors’ call for additional clarity, as this results in the best possible reflection of asset values in the group for all stakeholders, including the Company’s minority investors. For its part management also continues to look for ways to optimise the output for the Phase 2 operations in order to move closer towards the design-based capacities and hence improved profitability. There are many different elements being embraced to achieve this while all of them ultimately are rather dependent on the furnace, which has to run on a 24/7 basis.
Accordingly, the preparation of consolidated group and standalone financial statements for the Company and its subsidiaries (the ‘Group’) requires additional time.
The Management Board of the Company hereby notifies that the 2018 audited annual consolidated and standalone financial statements are anticipated to be distributed by 14 June, 2019.