Henry Boot plc makes £22m interim pre-tax profit

Henry Boot has enjoyed a vibrant £22m interim pre-tax profit and the news is that things are likely to get better still – chairman John Reis commenting this morning that profitability for the full year is expected to be biased towards the second half.

Turnover (six months to 30 June) was little changed at £47m (figure in the comparable period last year: £51m). Profit last time round ran to £13m.

The Boot group is managed as three business segments: property and land development; construction; and what is delightfully titled “other”.

It was the first of these three that brought home the bacon in grand style, with a turnover of £18m generating an operating profit of £23m.

Property’s flagship retail development at Ayr Central was completed and Boot is working to fully let the property. At Bromley, the final retail phase was completed and occupied.

The motorway service area known as Stop 24, at junction 11 on the M20, should be open to traffic later in the year. It will be the largest in the country.

In May, the property division acquired a 5-acre redundant factory site in Bodmin. The plan is to develop a 50,000 ft2 trade counter and industrial site. It will complement Boot’s nearby Bodmin Tor Retail Park.

A planning application has gone in for a 150,000 ft2 mixed-use scheme in Grimsby, regenerating derelict land in the town centre.

Boot’s second operation is construction and it made a £2.7m operating profit on turnover of £32m. Activities include PFI and plant hire.

Jamie Boot, managing director, said: “We have a strong construction orderbook through the second half of this year and into 2008.”

The £8m contract for a combined garden centre and retail complex for Dobbies, just south of Sheffield, is nearly complete.

Boot added: “We have carved out strong niches within Decent Homes refurbishment and Prison Alliance programmes which are providing the opportunity to win work on a medium-term basis.”

The group’s third wing, the one mysteriously dubbed “other”, managed an operating loss of £2.2m from a turnover of just £330,000. It could have been worse – in the same period last year a turnover of £400,000 prompted a £2.5m loss. No wonder Boot gives nothing away by way of any detail as to what it gets up.