Hyder Consulting reports £3.2m pre-tax profit

Hyder Consulting, the design consultancy, has announced a pre-tax profit of £3.2m for the 12 months to 31 March.

The profit in the previous year ran to £13m.

Yet strangely, chairman Sir Alan Thomas commented: “I am pleased to report another year of growth with both profits and cash ahead of last year.”

Turnover of £320m was well ahead of the 2008 figure of £230m.

The latest profit was trimmed back by exceptional items running to more than £9m, this tally being largely made up of:

• £5m of redundancy costs
• £3.9m of vacant property costs

In the previous year, Hyder generated net cash of £6m but in the latest period the business sucked in £5m.

Hyder showed that it feels to be financially robust by paying shareholders a dividend of £1.3m.

Segmental analysis shows the three main contributions to turnover were:

• UK/Europe - £130m
• Middle East - £110m
• Asia Pacific - £84m

The operation profit from these three global regions, before £3.7m of group overheads, was:

• UK/Europe - £8.3m
• Middle East - £8.3m
• Asia Pacific - £4.5m

Operating summary

In the UK, the transportation business “performed strongly”. In rail sector, Hyder was approved for all seven of the Crossrail frameworks, and won a major project on the North London Line.

Hyder is the client representative on the M25 widening DBFO contract.

In German highways, Hyder was awarded the design approval and construction
supervision role on the A5 autobahn PPP project in south west Germany. This is Hyder’s third motorway PPP.

In the Middle East, only 25% of the business is related to the Dubai property sector and over 55% of Hyder’s fee income from the region comes from the oil and gas based economies of Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Bahrain.

In Australia, Hyder is part of alliances working on the West Gate Freeway Upgrade for the Victoria State Government and the Ipswich Motorway Upgrade for the Queensland State Government.

Also in Australia, Hyder has won a part in the government's 'Building the Education Revolution' programme, part of its economic stimulus package and is lead designer
on the large Royal North Shore Hospital scheme.