Balfour Beatty is on track to meet financial targets despite a difficult period in the European rail sector.
The company has recorded underlying pre-tax profits of £154 million in the first half of this year, but added that problems in Continental Europe and operational issues on some projects had impacted profitability.
The company’s construction division expects to maintain an underlying margin of around two per cent for the full year, with the construction services division anticipating a boost in its rail business in the remainder of this year.
Volumes are also growing in the Middle East, where the company is involved in the Qatar Rail Project for the Qatar Railway Company.
Ian Tyler, Balfour Beatty chief executive, said: “They are a solid set of results. The market conditions that we’re operating in at the moment are quite challenging in a number of areas and against that back drop this is a good set of results.
“We’ve maintained our order book at around about £15 billion so that means we have brought in new work of just over £4 billion a year which in these conditions is a good result.
“In the short term we clearly have some challenging conditions in our market. We have a lot of the building blocks in place to ensure that we underpin our business through that period.”
