Willmott Dixon, the privately owned contracting, residential development and property support company,has reported a pre-tax profit of £16.2 million for the financial year ending 31st December 2013.
The Letchworth-based company, which has regional offices in Birmingham, Nottingham and Oxford and employs almost 800 staff in the Midlands, saw turnover across its Capital Works, Regen and Support Services divisions fall slightly from £1.03 billion in 2012 to £1.02 billion in 2013. Its gross profit margin increased from 8.4 per cent to 8.5 per cent.
As at March 2014, Willmott Dixon had a secured forward order book of £2.05 billion, with 91 per cent of the Group’s budgeted work already secured for the year.
Willmott Dixon Group chief executive Rick Willmott said: “Our work volumes and turnover continue to hold up well, while our reduced pre-tax profit reflects a small number of projects now completed that did not deliver the margins we had expected.
“We are seeing more opportunities across our industry owing to greater economic confidence and a stronger housing market and we have focused our skill-sets and resources accordingly.
“Our frameworks and long-term contracts continue to give us a robust pipeline of construction and support services work while our development businessRegen, delivering both homes for sale and private rent, really ‘came of age’ in 2013 with a significant volume of development that will increase in 2014 and beyond.”
Turnover for Willmott Dixon’s Capital Works division, the main construction arm of the company,fell fractionally to £899 million over the year, down from £904 million in 2012.
Last year, Willmott Dixon completed projects with a total turnover value of just under £110 million across the Midlands and has already secured more than £160 million for 2014 and almost 90 per cent of its target for 2015.
Peter Owen, managing director of Willmott Dixon Construction, Midlands, said: “We are continuing to strengthenour presence in the higher and further education sectors having secured a number of major projects, including phase two of Birmingham City University’s £180m estate masterplan, the University of Birmingham’s new £19 million training school,and being appointed by the University of Leicester to build the UK’s largest non-residential Passivhaus project, the University’s College of Medicine. We also completedone of the quietest buildings in the world, the Material Sciences and Metallurgy facility for the University of Cambridge.
“Local authority procurement frameworks, such as SCAPE and Construction West Midlands (CWM), continue to be an important source of work, with Willmott Dixon Construction in the Midlandscurrently working on more than £100 million worth of projects awarded through various frameworks.
“The tendering market is also important, particularly for projects in the commercial, health, science and technology, and education sectors.
“Having already secured this year’s target turnover and a significant proportion of next year’s, we are currently looking at how we might successfully increase the targets and deliver better results.”
Willmott Dixon was recently awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in recognition of its commitment to being a sustainable and responsible company. Each year it invests more than £1 million in local communities.