Morgan Sindall has reported pretax profits of £15.4m for the first six months of the year as performance improved across all divisions.
At an operating level, last year’s £25m first-half loss became a £17.5m profit this year.
In the first half of 2015 Morgan Sindall wrote off £40m for historic losses on the Faslane naval base project in Scotland, which pushed it into a £27.2m pretax loss for the period.
There is no such red ink this time, although a further £700,000 exceptional charge was logged against a second old contract that transferred as part of the acquisition of the design and project services division of Amec in 2007 – thus drawing a line under the affair.
Overall, the Construction & Infrastructure division continued its recovery, with adjusted operating profit of £3.2m (2015 – £0.3m) on revenue down 2% to £612m, giving a 0.5% operating margin.
John Morgan, chief executive, said the group had delivered strong profit growth in the first half, with an improved cash position and lower average net debt across the period.
“All divisions have contributed, demonstrating the strategic and operational progress made across the Group over the last few years.
“The EU referendum result has introduced some uncertainty into the markets in which we operate and it’s still too early to determine what the potential impact on the group will be in the medium and longer term.”
