But the company’s order book at the end of 2011 was €13.4bn, which was down 9% on the 2010 level. For the most part, this was due to workloads in Poland as the preparations for the 2012 European Football Championship had triggered major infrastructure investments. Strabag had won several of the resulting contracts and finished these in the 2011 financial year. This transformed an order book of about €1.4bn into output, so that the order backlog in Poland alone sank from €2.3bn to around €900 million.
It is targetting a largely stable output for 2012 and earnings before interest and tax of more than €300m.
For the 2011 financial year, the company had expected an increase from €12.8bn to €14bn but achieved a rise of 12 %. The growth was due to strong demand in the German building construction and civil engineering segment, the booming Polish construction sector above all in the field of transportation infrastructures and the expansion in northern Europe. Additionally, Strabag acquired two construction businesses in Switzerland in the first quarter of 2011.
For 2012, Strabag continues to see an output of approximately €14.3bn. The forecast by segment is: building construction and civil engineering €5.5bn (2011: €5.1bn), transportation infrastructure €6.1bn (€6.7bn), special division and concessions €2.6bn (€2.3bn) and other €100 million. The company said that its assumes that it will be able to compensate for the expected declines in Poland through output growth in several other countries.
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