Minerva Equity, the holding company for infrastructure specialist contractor M Group Services, delivered a £40m underlying operating profit in the year to March 2021.
The pre-exceptional and amortisation profit was down a third on the previous year but was described as a resilient performance by M Group Services chief executive Jim Arnold. M Group Services business performance was also supported by nearly £24m in covid job retention grants and £29m in VAT payments deferredt o support cash.
Despite Covid disruption revenue only slipped 3% to £1.26bn as its infrastructure business managed to trade with limited disruption.
As a result, the group recorded revenue growth within water and telecoms. Transport recorded revenue slightly down with good rail growth offset by a large reduction in aviation work.
Minerva Equity trading divisions
Turnover | 2020 | 2021 |
Energy | £378m | £448m |
Water | £443m | £422m |
Telecoms | £259m | £238m |
Transport | £181m | £193 |
The pandemic had the biggest impact on the energy division as its work contained most consumer-facing activity, like domestic supply pipe replacement, smart meter installation and meter reading.
The latest figures do not include the acquisition of Skanska UK’s £320m turnover infrastructure services operation last April, now rebranded Milestone Infrastructure.
Average monthly staff headcount fell by over 400 to 8,560 after a round of redundancies mainly in aviation-related business costing £1.3m and £1m of additional restructuring costs.
After amortisation of goodwill (£49m) from consolidated businesses and £49m in net interest costs on borrowings, Minerva Equity posted a pre-tax loss of £61m.
(Credit Aaron Morby. https://www.constructionenquirer.com/2021/10/13/m-group-services-owner-reports-40m-underlying-profit/)
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