Contractor increases pre-tax profit to £257m in 2004 and announces conctract wins in road, rail and social housing.

Contractor Balfour Beatty more than doubled its pre-tax profit in 2004 to £257m. In 2003 it made just £118m.

This was off a turnover of nearly £4.2bn, itself a 13% increase on 2003.

In a joint statement, chairman Sir David John and chief executive Ian Tyler said that Balfour Beatty should enjoy a strong 2005. They said: “We have leading positions in a number of long-term growth markets which continue to offer us encouragement and opportunity.”

But the group admitted that the decision by Network Rail to take maintenance contracts in-house and the weakness of the German market will harm results this year.

Counterbalancing this, though, is the trend of work towards design and build, private finance, bundling of work into larger packages and outsourcing, which the company said would play to its strengths

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Balfour Beatty also announced that it had won road, rail and social housing contracts worth £360m. £241m of this is a joint venture win with Skanska to widen the M1 motorway between the M25 and Luton.