Dalkia profit plunges despite ‘strong sales performance’
Technical and vitality companies contractor Dalkia UK saw its earnings plummet in spite of surging save a matter to in the nuclear and vitality sectors.
The London-primarily based mostly firm – a subsidiary of French disclose-escape vitality supplier EDF – tabled a pre-tax earnings of £312,000 in the yr to 31 December 2024, down from £21.5m the yr ahead of.
Nonetheless, a £15.8m loss from continuing operations in 2023 was offset by a earnings of £37.3m from discontinued operations. These included its Suir Engineering change in Eire, bought in January that yr to private equity neighborhood Duke Avenue for £69.2m.
Dalkia UK chief executive Gautier Jacob confirmed a “tough gross sales efficiency” in 2024 “in spite of some headwinds in the UK constructing market in the context of excessive inflation and pastime charges”.
Turnover additionally increased to £609m, up moderately of on the outdated yr’s £607.2m complete (including £25.4m from discontinued operations), as Dalkia met its strategic blueprint to reach a turnover of £600m in 2024.
Dalkia’s money at hand grew from £42.6m to £55.6m, even supposing its annual dividend payout fell from £44.3m to £6.8m.
The firm’s team edged up from 4,019 to 4,064 team, and its annual wage invoice rose by 2 per cent to £204.3m.
Jacob mentioned enhance in the UK’s engineering sector had been “concentrated in our strategic sectors, with a indispensable growth in the nuclear and vitality sectors”.
The CEO additionally confirmed a “restricted quantity of legacy initiatives” had continued to bear an designate on Dalkia’s earnings in 2024. While he did not give an explanation for, remaining yr Dalkia reported plenty of laborious contract losses from initiatives in Scotland and the Midlands.
The company did table a provision of £6.1m for loss-making contracts at the stay of December, even supposing the total was significant lower than the £14.5m provision at the starting of the yr.
The contractor has additionally completely included Spie UK into its change after it bought the firm for £43m in December 2022. Spie has since been rebranded as Dalkia Operations.
More than £1m in charges was paid to integrate Spie in 2024, comprising £1.1m of integration charges and £109,000 of redundancy charges. In the outdated twelve months, it spent bigger than £1.7m on integration and redundancy measures.
Over the route of the yr, Dalkia repaid a £15m loan to EDF Energy.
Jacob mentioned he expected the change to “invent financially and operationally in the years to return” as a result of “size and quality of our screech book”. At the stay of 2024, Dalkia’s forward orders totalled £1.1bn.
In essentially the most modern model of the CN100 ranking, Dalkia was the UK’s twenty sixth largest contractor. It was additionally the largest mechanical and electrical contractor in the UK.
