For the year ended 31st March 2023 Octavius Infrastructure grew turnover by 13% to £215m (2022: £191m) but pre-tax profit was down 34% at £3.86m (2022: £5.86m).
Sullivan Street Partners acquired Osborne Infrastructure from family owned Geoffrey Osborne Ltd in September 2021. In March 2022 it was rebranded as Octavius Infrastructure.
Profits in fiscal 2023 were down partly because of two contracts whose budgets were hit by cost inflation and partly due to the 2022 result including a one-off benefit relating to the release of an unused long-term incentive plan (LTIP) provision on completion of the sale of the company in September 2021.
This year’s results also includes £1.2m of transition costs, relating to the split from Osborne.
Profit before exceptional items dipped rather less – from £5.9m to £5.1m.
The results for the financial year and the financial position at year-end were considered by the directors to be good, chief executive John Dowsett writes in the annual report. Cash on the balance sheet at financial year-end was £9.3m, up from £8.3m at the start of the year, and total equity grew from £14.4m to £17.8m.
During the year Octavius Infrastructure spent more than £60,000 on reforestation and renewable energy projects around the world – planting 4,000 trees – to ‘offset’ 4,000 tonnes of CO2e.
Highlights of the year include completion of the company’s largest ever contract, the £61m A46 Binley flyover in Coventry, and winning substantial work for Network Rail.
Octavius Infrastructure is one of four contractors on Network Rail’s Southern Integrated Delivery framework, which is expected to deliver £9bn of work over the next 10 years. It also has a stations and building works contract for Network Rail’s Wales & Western Region.
Chief executive John Dowsett said: “These results represent a solid year in which we’ve continued to lay firm foundations for success as an independent, specialist engineering business that our customers, partners and colleagues want to work with. With a strong project pipeline and further opportunities to convert, the board and I have every confidence in our strategy to safely deliver profitable growth across Highways and Rail.
“As ever, it is our people that sets our business apart. They have thrived in our newly independent business, seizing the opportunity to make some great improvements such as investing in carbon neutrality, recruiting new talent, further developing our existing teams and delivering £63m of social value. These have been achieved whilst continuing to place safe project delivery for our customers at the heart of everything that we do and against a backdrop of significant cost inflation.”
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