{"id":3942,"date":"2019-03-13T08:21:41","date_gmt":"2019-03-13T08:21:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/?p=3942"},"modified":"2019-03-13T08:21:41","modified_gmt":"2019-03-13T08:21:41","slug":"balfour-beatty-hits-2-4-construction-margin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/balfour-beatty-hits-2-4-construction-margin\/","title":{"rendered":"Balfour Beatty hits 2.4% construction margin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Balfour Beatty has returned to industry standard margins and built up strong cash reserves completing a three-year turnaround plan.<\/p>\n

The firm reported underlying profit from operations last year rose 5% to \u00a3205m from revenue down by around 5% to \u00a37.8bn.<\/span><\/p>\n

Leo Quinn, Balfour Beatty group chief executive, said: “Since the start of Build to Last in 2015, Balfour Beatty has simplified and refocused its operations, embedded new governance, reduced operating expenses by almost 40% and invested steadily in innovation, capability and leadership.<\/span><\/p>\n

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“The businesses are back at industry standard margins, underpinned by a strong balance sheet and asset base.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Balfour Beatty’s transformation has gone beyond resolving the legacy issues of forced growth.<\/span><\/p>\n

He said: “The group’s strong competitive positions in large and growing infrastructure markets, and the platform provided by its scalable operating model, provide the ability to deliver profitable managed growth.”<\/span><\/p>\n

During the year Balfour’s cash position remained strong with\u00a0average net cash up to \u00a3194m from \u00a342m previously.<\/p>\n

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The order book increased by 11% to \u00a312.6bn while maintaining disciplined selective bidding in line with the group’s stated policy, said Quinn.<\/p>\n

He added that the firm’s main operating businesses achieved Build to Last phase two margin targets in the second half of 2018, with UK construction hitting 2.4%, US construction reaching 1.4% and support services slightly ahead of target at 5.2%.<\/p>\n

Quinn said Balfour Beatty now has one of the strongest balance sheets in the sector with net assets increasing from \u00a31.06bn to \u00a31.24bn.<\/p>\n

Over the year the firm suffred an extra \u00a329m loss on the Aberdeen Bypass project, with the final financial out-turn of the contract dependent upon ongoing claims talks.<\/p>\n

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UK construction revenue\u00a0dipped slightly to \u00a31.9bn while underlying profit jumped by 75% to \u00a328m. US construction revenue also slipped 8% to \u00a33.3bn with profits stable at \u00a344m.<\/p>\n

Support services revenue increased by 4% to \u00a31.1bn, driven by an increase in utilities. Underlying profit from operations increased to \u00a346m(2017: \u00a341m)<\/p>\n

Quinn said: “Having achieved industry standard margins, Balfour Beatty now has the platform in place to scale the business to drive profitable managed growth.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

“The Group will look to benefit fully from its strong competitive positions in large and growing infrastructure markets to deliver market leading performance.”<\/span><\/p>\n

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from Construction Enquirer https:\/\/ift.tt\/2VXIQEF<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Balfour Beatty has returned to industry standard margins and built up strong cash reserves completing a three-year turnaround plan. The firm reported underlying profit from operations last year rose 5% to \u00a3205m from revenue down by around 5% to \u00a37.8bn. Leo Quinn, Balfour Beatty group chief executive, said: “Since the start of Build to Last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":154,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-3942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-construction-enquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3942"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3943,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3942\/revisions\/3943"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}