Member Article

Sheffield infrastructure group achieves £2.2m profit increase due to organic growth

Fulcrum, the Sheffield-based independent multi-utility infrastructure and services provider, has reported a rise in both revenue and profits.

The company, which operates across England, Scotland and Wales, has seen revenue grow to £37.7m, an increase of 4.4% on the previous financial year (£36.1m), and a pre-tax profit of £6.5m, compared to £4.3m in 2016.

Fulcrum has been able to achieve this ‘organic growth’ after securing an array of new gas, electricity, multi-utility and housing sector contracts.

Among them was a £4.2m project to install a new gas pipeline to a food manufacturing plant in the South West, a £1.1m gas pipeline in the Scottish Highlands and two housing development multi-utility projects worth a combined £300k.

Additional growth is being achieved through the strategy to increase ownership of gas, electricity and meter assets. Fulcrum increased its estate of domestic, industrial and commercial pipeline assets by £2.5m, to a total net book value of £11.9m, which generates an annualised gas transportation income of £1.6m, up from £1.1m in 2016.

The company also reached agreement to acquire a further £2.8m of additional gas assets from external utility infrastructure providers.

Fulcrum’s board has recommended a final dividend for the 2017 financial year of 1.3p per share, making the total dividend 1.9p for 2017 compared to 0.9p in the previous year.

Martin Donnachie, CEO of Fulcrum, said: “I am delighted to announce another set of strong results. Our integrated business model of providing multi-utility infrastructure services and growing our asset base continues to deliver profitable growth.

“The business has an established and growing market leading position. We will continue to focus on sales growth, improving customer service and using the cash generated to increase the asset base and the recurring transportation income, all whilst maintaining and improving operational disciplines.

“We continue to move forward at pace with confidence for the future as we remain on course to deliver incremental value to all our stakeholders by being the UK’s most trusted utility services partner.

“We are confident that the outlook remains positive and that the company continues to be well positioned to make sustained progress in 2018.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Andrew Willis .