Construction performance in the City: the winners and losers

Connaught and Aggreko both turned in sparkling performances, with share prices up 37% and 30% respectively, in the 12-month period to March 2008.

The period covers the year up to the presentation of the construction groups’ latest annual financial results.

But stepping back from this pair and looking instead at the sector’s overall performance, things were much less rosy: the mid-point wasn’t even price-neutral but rather showed that shares had, on average, fallen in value by a quarter.

Two well-known names featuring right at the centre of the table were Morgan Sindall, share price down by 24% and Keller with a loss of 25% - a far cry from the previous year when Keller headed the 2006 list with a share price rise of 98%.

In fact, everyone did much better the last time round when Rok’s shares rose by 94%, Renew firmed by 76% and Scott Wilson put on 73%. And just to remind you of the CJ list we published in March 2007, the bottom three at that time were Ashtead (share price fall of -19%), Jarvis (-22%) and Erinaceous (-39%).

Anyone who held on to their Erinaceous shares at that point might well have been excused for thinking things could hardly get worse… only they did as Erinaceous’ shares have managed to lose a staggering 99% of their value in the course of the latest rolling 12-month period. Which means if you had invested £10,000 at the start of this latest period, anticipating an over-due recovery, that money would have been worth a mere £100 at the end. And totally worthless shortly after when Erinaceous went into administration.

Not that Erinaceous was alone in disappointing its shareholders big-time as SMC shares fell by 93% in the 12 months to March 2008 and Jarvis, the honourable holder of the wooden spoon until two years ago, showed its ongoing capacity to disappoint as its shares fell by another 75% this time round.

It might be little comfort to know, but at least there was another group with an even worse share price performance this year.

The latest figures show that several other groups suffered falls of more than 50% in their share values, this band consisting of Pochin, Tolent, North Midlands Construction, Styles & Wood, Ashtead and Galliford Try.