Bam Construct sees profit rise in 2020
20 May 2021 By David Price
Bam Construct reported a rise in profit in 2020 after a “surprising” recovery from the early impact of the pandemic.
Pre-tax profit rose to £13.7m in 2020, up from £9.4m in 2019 when the company was forced to make a £26.7m provision to rebuild a concrete structure.
Bam Construct chief executive James Wimpenny told Construction News the pandemic had affected the company’s performance in 2020 by delaying some projects and reducing output on others. “It had an impact upon our revenue last year, in terms of where we felt the business should have been,” he said.
Revenue dropped 15 per cent from £930.5m in 2019 to £793.1m in 2020. Wimpenny said he was surprised at the final result for the year, however, given the early shock of the pandemic. “When you stand back, and you think that was only a 15 per cent hit on our revenue, that surprised me that it wasn’t more than that, when all this happened,” he said.
Workloads picked up as the year went on, he added, with productivity returning to more normal levels in the second half of the year.
He said it was hard to say how much the pandemic affected the company’s results, but estimated it might have knocked around one percentage point off its pre-tax margin of 1.7 per cent for 2020. The company expects revenue and profit to rebound in 2021.
Bam Construct ended the year with an order book of £1.147bn, up from £1.4bn at the end of 2019. It has picked up a number of new large contracts over the past 12 months, including the £190m Elstree Studios for Sky and a new £250m arena in Manchester. Wimpenny said demand for new projects had picked up, but the market was not overheating. "I wouldn't say it [the market] feels hot, I think he feels a bit warmer than it was. Which is good, because you don't want to be really worried about 'have you got the revenue'," he said.