Balfour Beatty sees order book shift towards support services
FOLLOWING its executive reshuffle earlier this week, FTSE 250-listed firm Balfour Beatty yesterday said its order book was shifting towards support services and infrastructure.
In a trading update, the infrastructure group said that last year’s performance would be in line with expectations.
The order book jumped to around £15bn at the end of the year – from £14.2bn at the end of November – boosted by two recent contract wins.
Balfour Beatty, which last year said it would review parts of its business following a profit warning, noted that its order book was shifting from its traditional offering of construction services to support services, and more generally, from building to infrastructure projects.
“Due to the longer-term nature and back-end loaded margin profile of these contracts, most of the benefit to revenue and profit arises in 2014 and thereafter,” the company said, which sent its shares down almost three per cent at the close of play yesterday.
Chief executive Ian Tyler is due to step down as chief executive at the end of March following an eight-year tenure. Deputy chief executive Andrew McNaughton will take the reins at the firm.