Atkins reports £103m pre-tax profit

Atkins has reported a pre-tax profit of £103m which is comfortably ahead of the £92m profit figure in the previous year.

The consultant’s latest figures cover the 12 months to 31 March 2009.

Turnover rose to £1.5bn (comparable figure in previous year: £1.4bn).

Operations resulted in a cash flow running to £130m and as a result of this Atkins ended the period with funds of £230m.

Keith Clarke, chief executive, said: “A successful year with good results against a backdrop of a challenging economic environment in the second half of the year.

“We start the new financial year in a good position. the majority of our markets are stable.”

After years of sustained growth, staff numbers peaked at 18,600 in November 2008.

Then came the decision to make 1,200 redundancies “in response to the worsening market conditions, principally in our UK and Middle East commercial and residential property-facing businesses.”

By the end of March, 600 staff had left the business by the year end, taking Atkins’ financial year-end staff numbers to 18,000.

The balance of 600 employees will leave within few months as their notice periods come to an end.

However Clarke added: “We continue to recruit to fill specialist vacancies in areas such as nuclear, which continue to experience growth in demand and to take in graduate trainees.”

Segmental results show turnover contributions from the group’s five operations:

• £440m - design and engineering solutions
• £330m - Middle East, China and Europe
• £310m - highways and transportation
• £240m - management and project services
• £50m - asset management

Their operating profits were:

• £32m - design and engineering solutions
• £22m - Middle East, China and Europe
• £20m - highways and transportation
• £19m - management and project services
• loss of £7m - asset management

Rail made the best margins with a figure of 8.7%.

This was a “substantial improvement on the prior year” with Atkins putting that down to the change in the contractual arrangements on for London Underground and increased activity in higher margin design business.

There was a reduction in turnover and a small decrease in staff numbers in line with the fall-off of Metronet-related activities.

Large re-signalling contracts for Network Rail accounted for nearly half of turnover.

During the year Atkins was awarded the re-signalling upgrade in Newport which includes designing, installing, testing and commissioning signalling units on the 35 mile stretch of track between Bristol and Cardiff.

On the North London Line, which forms part of the London 2012 transport plan, Atkins has been appointed to take this re-signalling project from detailed design to commissioning.

These two projects have combined revenue of £100m.

Crossrail remains a significant opportunity following Atkins’ appointment to the design framework earlier in the year. To date the group, in partnership with Arup, has been awarded the Tottenham Court Road station and bored tunnel design packages.