{"id":7320,"date":"2025-08-20T07:46:45","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T07:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/?p=7320"},"modified":"2025-08-20T07:46:45","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T07:46:45","slug":"costain-margin-heads-for-4-5-after-half-year-profit-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/costain-margin-heads-for-4-5-after-half-year-profit-rise\/","title":{"rendered":"Costain margin heads for 4.5% after half-year profit rise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Costain has posted a rise in first-half profits as improved contract selectivity and strong performance in its natural resources arm offset a sharp revenue dip caused by HS2 schedule changes.<\/p>\n

Revenue fell 18% to \u00a3525m, with road and rail volumes down as highways schemes completed and parts of the HS2 programme were rephased into later years.<\/p>\n

Despite this margins climbed to 3.2% from 2.5% as reported pre-tax profit edged up 7% to \u00a318m.<\/p>\n

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Chief executive Alex Vaughan said the results underlined \u201cthe improving quality of our contract portfolio\u201d and confirmed the group was on track to hit its 4.5% margin run-rate in the full-year.<\/p>\n

Natural resources proved the standout performer, with revenue up 7% to \u00a3209m and divisional operating profit nearly doubling to \u00a316m.<\/p>\n

The unit benefitted from new energy transition work, contract wins in defence and nuclear, and a positive close to the AMP7 water framework cycle. Margins in the division leapt to 7.7% from 4.3%.<\/p>\n

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The highways business, however, felt the impact of project completions, with road revenues halving to just \u00a382m. This saw revenue at the transportation division fall by 29% to \u00a3316m and operating profit plunge to \u00a37.3m (H1 24: \u00a313.8m). Costain added it was seeing a rising workload at Heathrow, which lifted integrated transport revenues nearly 80% to \u00a349m.<\/p>\n

The forward order book has swelled to \u00a35.6bn \u2013 more than four times last year\u2019s turnover \u2013 as Costain secured new long-term programmes across water, nuclear and aviation.<\/p>\n

Presently the order book contains no single stage lump sum contracts and was predominated by target cost contracts.<\/p>\n

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Costain said 90% of forecast revenue for FY25 is already secured.<\/p>\n

Cash remains strong at \u00a3145m, with year-end levels expected around \u00a3170m despite the launch of a fresh \u00a310m share buyback. Shareholders will also benefit from a 1.0p interim dividend, up 150% on last year.<\/p>\n

Vaughan said government\u2019s new infrastructure strategy and regulatory determinations in water, energy and aviation \u201cprovide clarity and confidence in significant growth opportunities\u201d across Costain\u2019s core markets.<\/p>\n

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

Costain has posted a rise in first-half profits as improved contract selectivity and strong performance in its natural resources arm offset a sharp revenue dip caused by HS2 schedule changes. Revenue fell 18% to \u00a3525m, with road and rail volumes down as highways schemes completed and parts of the HS2 programme were rephased into later […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":153,"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-7320","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\/7320","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=7320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7321,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7320\/revisions\/7321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cita.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}