NG Bailey delivers ‘positive results’

The company, which is one of the UK’s largest independent engineering, IT and facilities services companies, posted an underlying operating profit of £2.1m in the year ended February 28 2014, compared with an underlying operating loss of £2m the year before.

NG Bailey also recorded a fall in group sales of 10 per cent to £380m during the period.

The company, which is based in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, said that this fall was largely due to the continued challenges in the traditional building construction sector. It also decided to avoid high risk, low margin work.

David Hurcomb, NG Bailey’s chief executive, said: “This is a strong set of results achieved against the backdrop of the worst recession seen in construction, one which has been particularly severe for specialist contractors such as NG Bailey.

“This result is testament to the very high quality of our people and the significant investment in training - including our apprenticeship programme. We have continued to invest in training and in developing new growth sectors throughout the recession, as we are confident this will deliver value in the long-term. Our facilities services, IT services and rail divisions performed particularly well, which helped balance the overall result as our other divisions, operating in the more traditional building construction sectors, were hit harder by the financial downturn. We have worked very hard to achieve this result. Our balance sheet remains strong, net assets are up against the previous year, to £84m – almost all of which is in cash - and we have no borrowings. We are a well-balanced, profitable, business and we have successfully maintained strict cost controls, while still investing to ensure our long-term growth plan is achieved.”

Mr Hurcomb added; “We have just over 800 employees in Yorkshire, and we expect that number to go up.”

Kevin Whiteman, NG Bailey’s chairman, added: “These are a very positive set of results, which further proves NG Bailey’s strength in the marketplace as a leader in its field. It also proves that our transformational diversification strategy is the right one, allowing us to better balance the business in the areas of traditional building construction, infrastructure and services.”

NG Bailey’s order book stands at around £600m, and the company said it has “a continuingly expanding customer base” across sectors including education, retail, power and industrial, financial services, energy, rail and utilities. Earlier this year, NG Bailey secured a major contract with the Ministry of Defence. The company was awarded a £25m contract to complete all the mechanical and electrical engineering works at the Beacon Barracks base in Staffordshire, working alongside the main contractor, Lend Lease.