Shares of Manchester-based McBride plc, the manufacturer of household cleaning products, rose about 6% on Tuesday after it published a trading update for its current financial year that ends on June 30, 2020.

McBride said it expects full year adjusted profit before tax to be approximately 15% ahead of current market expectations amid higher demand for its cleaning products during the coronavirus crisis.

The firm said: “Further to our update on 25 March 2020, demand levels in our household business have moderated from the surge seen in many markets as countries went into lockdown but encouragingly remain above the run-rate levels seen before March.

“These higher demand levels are evident in most of our major markets and apply mostly to surface cleaning and dishwashing products, with more limited impact in laundry products.

“Our teams have worked well to address the early challenges of staff shortages, material availability and distribution blockages and all factories are currently operating at more normal activity levels.

“As anticipated in our March update, we have seen lower input pricing in this period although some of this benefit has been tempered by one off COVID-19 related operating costs.  

“The group’s Aerosols business is benefiting from sales of new hand sanitiser products and as a result will deliver a profit improvement in the final quarter, supported by investment in additional production capacity.

“As a consequence the board now expects full year adjusted profit before tax to be approximately 15% ahead of current market expectations and for net debt at 30 June 2020 to be lower than expectations.

“The group will issue a year end trading statement on 14 July 2020 and preliminary results are scheduled to be announced on 8 September 2020.”