Dawn Construction: profit margin of 14.6%, up from 8.3%

Dawn Construction has lifted its profit margin to 14.6% thanks to a climb in pre-tax profit to £12m.

The Scottish building contractor’s previous year’s figures produced a margin of 8.3%.

Dawn’s latest annual results cover the 12 months to 31 January 2008.

Turnover ran to £84m, down £6m. In the previous year, Dawn’s £90m generated a pre-tax profit of £7.5m.

“The company had another excellent year,” said the directors in their statement. “The focus once again was on partnering with strong clients on medium to larger sized contracts and on growing the public sector portfolio.

“The business is well positioned to weather what could be a difficult and increasingly competitive market over the next year or so as the effects of a weak property market and the credit crunch reduce activity levels throughout the industry.”

Dawn reports a “good orderbook” for the current year.

There was no dividend paid out to shareholders in the past 12 months though in the previous year a £2m dividend was voted through.

The number of staff employed was just 20.

The directors were all paid by the parent company except for pension contributions and long-term incentive scheme pay-outs.

Under these, the highest-paid director had £8,900 put into his pension scheme while there was a further benefit of £245,000 through his incentive plan.

Director Alan Macdonald held a majority of the shares in the company throughout the year.