Scott Wilson unveils record £20m profit

Scott Wilson (SW), the consultancy group, has made a record pre-tax profit of £20m which represents a margin of 6.1%.

Turnover in the 12 months to 27 April was £320m, well ahead of the figure of £260m in the previous year, when a profit of £15m translated into a margin of 5.9%.

Geoff French, chairman, said: “We continue to execute a successful growth strategy which in the last 12 months has led to an improvement in our international business, delivered several acquisitions and improved our internal infrastructure by reducing the size of our senior executive team.”

SW has lifted its targets to a more challenging level and key elements of the new plan are:

• achieve organic growth of 10% or more
• increase operating margin to 10% by 2013
• make further acquisitions

Sean Cummins has been brought on board as finance director. The group also decided it was time to have a single chief executive rather than two: Hugh Blackwood settled into that post while Ron Wall stepped down.

The number of employees has climbed from 5,500 at the start of the period to a figure of 6,300.

SW splits its operations between five divisions where turnovers are:

• £93m -UK Central
• £85m – UK South
• £70m – International
• £45m – UK Railways
• £32m – Scotland & Ireland

The operating profit generated by each of these five was in almost the same order:

• £7.9m -UK Central
• £6.3m – UK South
• £3.6m – International
• £2.5m – Scotland & Ireland
• £2.3m – UK Railways

Within the UK Railways division, the year was dominated by the buoyant but turbulent market in the major project arena. This involved the ongoing delivery of several long-term schemes including the West Coast route modernisation and Crossrail feasibility studies.

The sudden loss of Edinburgh Airport Rail Link, through a political change, and related reduction in volume on Edinburgh Tram, was partly offset by an upturn in volume on the East London Line.

The contract to cover design on the Airdrie to Bathgate line re-opening was extended.

French said: “More than 50% of the world’s population now live in urban areas. This and the increasing acknowledgement of the green credentials of rail is bringing a huge increase in metro investment around the world.

“Recognising this, a new metro team has been set up within UK Railways to bring together a core technical competency for the group.”

The news on the group’s pension scheme situation wasn’t particularly bright with the deficit climbing to £20m, a substantial major rise from the previous shortfall of £12m. Part of the explanation is that SW has changed its mortality assumptions to recognise improvements in life expectancy.

Shareholders in SW should be smiling, though, as they are set to receive a total of £13m by way of dividends, up from £10m in the previous year.