Galliford Try Holdings PLC (LSE:GFRD) chief financial officer Kris Hampson talked with Proactive about the company’s strong performance in its full-year 2025 results.
Hampson said, “The simple message is that the messages of H1 have continued,” highlighting robust activity across Galliford Try’s building and infrastructure divisions. He noted strong demand in education, custodial, and defence sectors, alongside significant progress in highways and environmental projects, aided by favourable weather.
Galliford Try has secured an order book of £4.1 billion, with 92% of 2026 revenue already secured and 75% secured for 2027—up five percentage points from the previous year. Hampson attributed this visibility to a high proportion of framework-based work in the public and regulated sectors, which he described as “non-cyclical” and resilient.
The company recently announced its participation in a civil engineering lot under a new National Grid high-voltage network framework, marking a strategic extension into the energy sector. Hampson explained that sustainable growth remains central to Galliford Try’s 2030 strategy, which aims for consistent increases in revenue, profit, and cash.
Having achieved its interim margin target of 3% a year early, Hampson outlined four key drivers to reach 4% by 2030: increased volumes, improved contracting environments, ongoing operational improvements, and growth in higher-margin specialist services.
While a temporary revenue flattening is expected in 2026 due to the AMP7 to AMP8 transition in the water sector, Hampson emphasised AMP8’s scale and long-term potential, stating, “AMP8…is about £105 billion, so double AMP7.”
Galliford Try remains confident about its medium-term outlook, citing strong margin progression and a healthy project pipeline well into 2028.
Proactive: Kris, very good to speak with you again. Can you give us an introduction to Galliford Try for those who may not already know you?
Kris Hampson: So Galliford Try is a leading tier one UK construction group. We build social and economic critical infrastructure for the UK. And, really, at the moment, what we see in front of us is huge amounts of work, as the government has underinvested in these spaces for several years.
So what am I talking about here? I'm talking about schools, prisons, roads, affordable housing. And by affordable housing, we mean medium-rise blocks of flats, water infrastructure, water and wastewater treatment plants, and highways. And, pleasingly, we've just announced a partnership on a new energy framework — that's a civil engineering lot of the National Grid high-voltage network.
So we're extending ourselves into a new area there. 90% of our work is on frameworks for the public and regulated sector. These frameworks are non-cyclical; they continue over time. The majority of our work is for government-regulated bodies. Recent government announcements — the 2025 Comprehensive Spending Review and the infrastructure plan — show there's a huge amount of work for us in our chosen sectors.
We believe the government has freed itself up to invest in national infrastructure, as it must, with the changes in its financial policies. We think there's a huge opportunity in front of us. We also believe in sustainable growth. Our strategy to 2030 is about delivering sustainable results year on year — increases in revenue, profit, and cash.
And, pleasingly, we've had five years of sequential growth now. So we see that we're starting to be able to show that we can continuously deliver those results.
Proactive: Kris, today's announcement of your full-year results for 2025 saw Galliford Try deliver a very strong performance, good growth in revenue and double-digit profitability, and an order book of £4.1 billion. What have been the key drivers of that performance?
Kris Hampson: Thanks, Stephen. Yeah, we're really pleased with how the year has turned out. The simple message is that the messages of H1 have continued.
We’ve had a robust performance in our building division, with strong demand in education, custodial, and defence. In infrastructure, we’ve had good progress in highways. The drier spring and summer allowed us to make further progress on our projects.
In environment, the AMP7 runoff has been excellent — the water companies are continuing to spend, so that's been really strong.
We’ve also had successful project wins, including the high-voltage network with National Grid — that's an extension of our strategy into energy.
In prisons, highways, and our specialist services business, we're starting to make some wins, which pushed the order book to £4.1 billion.
The key message I’d like to highlight is that 92% of our 2026 revenue is already secured. That’s the same as last year. For 2027, we already have 75% secured — that’s five percentage points higher than it was a year ago. So we have really strong visibility of revenue for 2026 and 2027, which gives us confidence for the future.
Proactive:
Kris, you've reached your interim margin targets of 3% one year early. What are the elements driving performance and confidence to get to 4% by 2030?
Kris Hampson: We think there are four key building blocks within that progress.
First, we’ve been driving volumes — we’ve grown by a third in the last two years. That gives us operational leverage, which helps on margins.
Second, we’re in a much better contracting environment. Relationships over these frameworks last longer. We're involved earlier in the programs, which means we can design and price the contracts better. That improves buildability, lowers defects, and helps us retain margins.
Third, we’re making operational improvements and investing in organic growth — these return higher margins.
Fourth, our specialist services businesses in higher-margin adjacent markets are growing and starting to contribute to margins.
We're pleased to have hit the 3% margin a year early. We’ll keep building on these blocks over the next four to five years to get to our 2030 targets.
Proactive: You've had two back-to-back years of exceptional growth. How should we think about your growth profile as you progress towards your 2030 growth targets?
Kris Hampson: We're not focused on linear growth, Stephen. The most important thing for us is delivering sustainable profits and cash.
We’ve grown by over a third in the last two years — a CAGR of around 14% since 2020. That’s fast growth. But we don’t necessarily expect that to continue at the same pace.
For 2026, we expect a slight flattening in revenue. That’s due to the transition from AMP7 to AMP8 in the water sector — that’s the main driver.
AMP8 is about £105 billion — double AMP7. So it’s a necessary changeover. Early revenues are already coming through, mainly in design work, which will lead to construction and higher revenues in the future.
There's also a change in mix as we build our specialist services businesses, which will take more time to scale.
We're confident that our margin trajectory will continue — we expect further margin expansion and incremental profitability in 2026.
The medium-term outlook is strong — 2027 looks great, 2028 even better.
When we’re out on site, we see just how much work needs to be done. We’re pleased to be contributing to UK infrastructure.
Proactive: Kris, I hope you'll continue to keep us updated with your progress. Thank you very much for taking the time today.