The UK arm of Vinci has increased its profit almost fivefold despite its civil engineering business Taylor Woodrow making a loss.
Pretax profit for 2017 increased to £22.4m from £4.6m, though turnover was down to £870.1m from £948.8m.
Taylor Woodrow continues to be plagued by problem contracts, including the Nottingham tram project. Turnover was reduced to £205m from £269m, and its pretax loss grew to £17.7m.
Bruno Dupety, Vinci chairman, said: “Although many of our commercial challenges have been closed during 2017, the number of projects projecting an end loss has increased from two at the end of 2016 to three. One of the three can be converted back to profitability, however the same two as at the end of 2016 will remain loss-making until their completion.”
Turnover for the building division grew 3.7% from £407m to £422m and pretax profit was £6.5m. Dupety said each of its six building regions traded profitably “for the first time in a number of years”.
However, he warned that contract awards in 2017 “tailed off towards the end of the year, as we saw a tightening of the market with fewer opportunities and greater competition”.
Vinci Facilities reported lower turnover of £224m, down from £238m, due to “more selective tendering”, though operating profit of £5.5m represented a margin of 2.5%, up from 1.5% a year ago.
The group’s development and PFI business contributed £34.8m of pretax profit to the group.
Dupety said: “2017 was a fair year for the group, with a good level of activity and a profit rate of 2.6%. Net positive cash has massively improved from last year, to a year-end position of +£210m. We enter 2018 with an order book of £925m which makes us confident for our performance next year and going forward.”
