Balfour Beatty plc (LSE:BBY), the infrastructure contractor, said overall trading this year had been in line with expectations.
At the end of March, the group's order book was £15.6bn, down from £16.1bn at the end of 2021.
Over the first four months of 2022, the average monthly closing net cash balance increased to around £800 million (full-year 2021 average: £671 million, December 2021 net cash balance: £790 million). On completion of the 2022 share buyback, and some expected normalisation of working capital, the average monthly net cash for the full year is expected to be moderately lower than the first four months of the year.
The board continues to have confidence the group will deliver managed growth in profits in 2022, the company said in a trading update issued ahead of its annual general meeting today.
Ahead of our Annual General Meeting later today, we’ve provided an update on business performance for the first four months of the year. You can read the full announcement here. https://t.co/XuA7GTjSRd
— Balfour Beatty (@balfourbeatty) May 12, 2022
“Our business portfolio has been transformed to focus on the growing infrastructure markets of the UK, US, and Hong Kong - each underpinned by strong government investment programmes. The strength of our balance sheet and the higher quality of our order book will enable us to maximise these opportunities for profitable growth while remaining resilient to the current macro-economic challenges,” said Leo Quinn, Balfour Beatty’s chief executive.
Shares in Balfour Beatty were off 1.7% at 237p in the first hour of trading, thus outperforming the FTSE 100, which was down 2.1%.