With UK infrastructure policy emphasising maintenance and renewal over new construction, contractors like Renew, focused on providing the water industry, railways and highways with maintenance services, stand to benefit.
It is, for example, the largest provider of maintenance and renewals services to Network Rail.
Renew Holdings results for the year ended 30th September 2023 show group revenue increasing by 13% to £960.9m (FY2022: £849.0m), with organic growth of 10%.
Profit before tax was up 17% to £58.1m (2022: £49.5m).
The group order book grew to £860m (FY2022: £775m).
Chief executive Paul Scott said: "Our core strengths leave us well placed to build on our strong track record of long-term value creation as we look ahead with impressive trading momentum and a strong forward order book. We remain excited about the significant growth opportunities across the group, underpinned by the increasing national demand for the maintenance and renewal of existing UK infrastructure, which will continue to be a domestic priority regardless of the outcome of the next election."
He said: “There were many achievements across the group during the year, but I would like to highlight some key examples of how we are delivering profitable organic growth. Some of our more recent strategic acquisitions and our sharpened focus on collaboration within the group has seen us organically expand into areas where we had not previously operated. Most notably, the acquisitions of Enisca and Rail Electrification Limited (REL) have added to our capabilities and the unlocking of greater opportunities in more frameworks. In Water, we have successfully leveraged our mechanical, electrical, instrumentation, control and automation (MEICA) capabilities to win the Welsh Water major electrical and mechanical framework, whilst in Rail our subsidiaries have successfully collaborated to open up framework positions to the group that were previously unattainable. In Highways, we continue to deliver a growing work bank on our National Highways scheme delivery frameworks where there continues to be an emphasis on asset maintenance and renewals. It has been extremely rewarding from a management perspective to see the strategic rationale behind our acquisitions start to come to fruition and there is still more to come. The enhanced focus on collaboration between our brands has contributed to a strong rate of organic growth during the period and it will continue to be a focus going forward.
“Acquisitions form a key feature of our strategic ambition to deliver compounding shareholder returns as we have historically demonstrated. We finished the year with a robust balance sheet and this, together with our strong operational cash generation, leaves us well positioned to continue to appraise selective value-accretive M&A opportunities. We are currently seeing a healthy pipeline of opportunities including complementary bolt-on acquisitions as well as larger, more complex opportunities that will grow our geographical reach and service capability in a similar way to that achieved by our recent strategic acquisitions. As we expand through M&A, we will continue to leverage collaboration opportunities between our brands, providing a unique advantage when applying for a broader range of frameworks.”
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