Keltbray (BE) Holdings Limited Announces 2023 Full Year Results

Esher, UK – 1^st July 2024: Keltbray, a UK-leading specialist construction engineering and infrastructure services company, today releases its Annual Report and Consolidated Financial Statements for the year ended 31^st October 2023.

Performance at-a-glance

The Keltbray Group posted a record financial performance, delivering strong order book growth despite the continuing uncertainties posed by the global challenges. Highlights include:

• Annual Turnover increased 30 per cent to £689.0m reflecting high quality contract wins despite tighter governance in opportunity selection and project delivery
• Gross Profit increased 25 per cent to £72.5m, whilst Operating Profit decreased very slightly to £4.9m due to significant continued investment in the business operations
• Group Cash Headroom position was maintained at £38.9m comprising cash balances and unused bank facilities, providing platform for continued growth
• 120 per cent growth in secured Order Book to £1,100.0m at Y/E2023, equivalent to one and a half year’s annual revenue, with 75 per cent of work secured for FY2024 by the year-end
• A healthy sales opportunity pipeline of addressable work of circa £4.0bn providing good line of sight to future earnings.

Operational and Financial Performance

Keltbray has delivered another strong operational performance, resulting in underlying year-on-year increases to revenue, gross profit and secured order book.  These improvements demonstrate our continuing efforts to focus on delivering project certainty for clients, enabled through our robust corporate governance framework and higher value integrated delivery model.

The year-end order book is significantly ahead of the prior year-end, largely due to the return on investments made in our business development and technical disciplines over the past four years.  The Group continues to de-risk the order book across its portfolio by focusing on robust selection governance, targeting projects with acceptable terms, conditions and financial margins, which benefit from our integrated, self-delivery approach.

Keltbray continued to invest in enhancing the effectiveness of its business model in support of clients’ sustainability goals, and can confirm it had a strong environmental performance, with 100% of its fixed locations now using renewable energy, and circular economy practices driving low carbon delivery on major projects.

Keltbray has also made strong progress in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), UK Government industrial strategy targets and our stakeholders’ environmental and social value ambitions.

Outlook

Looking forward, the economic outlook is beginning to show signs of greater stability with inflation steadily falling.  Despite these external forces, Keltbray’s focus on our improved, de-risked and diversified sales order pipeline and increasing operational focus in key areas of efficiency, effectiveness and control, gives us the confidence that we will continue to make strong progress with our strategy to deliver sustainable growth in a highly controlled manner.

Brendan Kerr, Group Executive Chairman commented:

“Keltbray’s business model has certainly been put to the test over the last four years, and I am pleased to report that it has served us well, making us an even stronger, more dynamic business today.

“I would like to thank everyone at Keltbray for their dedication and hard work. Their high levels of engagement have once again been instrumental to the business in producing a good set of results against a challenging backdrop.”

Darren James, Group Chief Executive said:

“I am pleased with the Group’s performance, particularly in key infrastructure markets such as energy transition and decarbonised transport, where secured work now exceeds £1 billion. Our high-quality order book provides visibility and security of future workloads, keeping our projects safely on track and enabling us to deliver a record set of results.

“Our two division, one business structure, addresses a broad range of large and expanding UK end markets, all of which are adapting to key structural drivers such as social and political change, carbon neutrality, energy transition and supply chain challenges to name but a few. This plays to Keltbray’s strength and will bring further opportunities for the Group.”

Peter Burnside, Group Chief Financial Officer said:

“These results once again reflect the inherent strength and adaptability of our diverse business portfolio, enhanced governance and the ongoing improvement in our operating performance, providing increasing confidence in our ability to meet our sustainable growth targets.”

The full 2023 Annual Report and Consolidated Financial Statements is now available to read and download here.

ENDS