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Dive brief:
- Balfour Beatty, the London-based infrastructure construction giant, is on the way see year-on-year growth across key measures of its business, according to the builder’s year-end business update.
- The company expects its backlog, or order book, to grow 20% by 2025, up from 18.4 billion pounds ($24.5 billion) last year. Balfour Beatty said its growth was largely driven by its work in the UK construction market, particularly in the energy sector, which generated £3.5bn of new orders for the year.
- In addition, Balfour Beatty expects its revenue to reach 5% ahead of 10 billion pounds in 2024, according to the press release. Its operating profit is expected to be higher than £252m in 2024, also due to UK work and partially offset by lower US revenue
Diving knowledge:
Balfour Beatty remains on track to meet its full-year earnings expectations. The company’s cash generation through its earnings and revenue was driven by the company’s work in select markets, such as US buildings and UK energy, the statement said.
In addition, the company committed to an additional share buyback in 2026an initiative that Balfour Beatty also took advantage of this year, according to Philip Hoare, the company’s managing director.
“Our immediate priority is to finish 2025 strongly, while laying the foundations for further progress in 2026, where I expect the group to continue on its path to deliver PFO growth across its earnings-led businesses,” Hoare said in the press release.
Despite the good news, the company saw weaker performance in its U.S. construction business which hurt its profits. In 2024, this segment of the business saw its revenue is down 2% up to £3.6 billion.
Another weakness in this arm of the business continued this year as a segment reported a loss of £11 million during the first half of 2025, according to Balfour Beatty’s semi-annual earnings call in August.
Then-CEO Leo Quinn, who he left office in Septembertold investors at the time that cost overruns on a highway project, which stemmed from design problems that led to rework, dragged down its U.S. civilian business.
Overall, Balfour Beatty’s full-year forecasts for its US civil business and US construction in general are largely unchanged from the first half of the year, the statement said. Despite the weakness, Balfour Beatty’s US order book is expected to grow more than 10% in 2025 dollars, up from $8.9 billion in 2024. This included $750 million of work at correctional facilities in the Southeast and $400 million for data centers in Virginia and Oregon.
