FCC obtained a profit of €40.5m (£35.4m) in the first quarter of 2011, an improvement of 9.8% compared with the same period of 2010.
These results reflect the positive performance of businesses such as environmental services, where earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) expanded 11.5%, broadly offsetting the impact of a decline in activity in the construction and cement areas in Spain.
“These first-quarter figures reflect the group's commitment since inception to geographic and sectoral diversification, and efforts to manage costs and the balance sheet," said FCC chairman and CEO Baldomero Falcones.
EBITDA amounted to €291.7m in the period. This repreents a 4.2% decline compared with the first quarter of 2010, but the EBITDA margin improved by 0.1percentage points to 11.9%. Adjusting for the decrease in consolidation scope due to divestments, EBITDA would have declined by just 2.1%.
EBITDA expanded by 5.7% in the services and energy areas as a result of the performance of the environmental services division, which expanded by 11.5%.
Revenues amounted to €2.459bn in the period, a decline of 4.9% with respect to 1Q10. This performance reflects the combined effects of sustained growth in the environmental services division (+2.2%) and in the construction and cement divisions outside Spain (+8.9%), and the slowdown in activity in the latter two areas in Spain. Lower wind levels reduced the energy division's revenues.
The decline in revenues at Versia is attributable to the sale of some of its activities at the end of 2010. In like-for-like terms, Versia's revenues expanded by 2.6%.
Net debt totalled €8.230bn, down 1.8% with respect to March 2010. This year-on-year decline is attributable to the seasonal fluctuations in working capital in the construction division: it tends to expand in the first half of the year and then decline, in line with previous years.
Activity outside Spain continued to grow, accounting for 45.9% of group revenues, an increase of 8.5%. Foreign revenues are concentrated in other European countries, which accounted for 83.7%, the bulk of which comes from the construction and environmental services divisions. The remaining 16.3% comes from America (4.9% in the US and 6% in Latin America) and Asia-Africa (5.4%).
FCC obtained international construction projects valued at over €2.15bn in the quarter. FCC, through its subsidiary Alpine, obtained a contract worth over €80m to expand a chemical plant in Abu Dhabi. The company was also awarded two new projects for the comprehensive refurbishment of several historic zones in Panama City, Panama, valued at €275m.
In the first quarter of 2011, the infrastructure division obtained notable railway construction contracts worth over €1.8bn. The company, acting as part of a consortium, obtained a 304m contract to build two tunnels and the Highway 407 station of the Toronto Metro in Canada. In March, a consortium in which FCC participates was awarded a contract to build a 66km railway line in Algeria for €1.232bn. Also in March, FCC was awarded a 267 million euro contract to build a section of Bucharest Metro’s fifth line in Romania.
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