Technical and energy services contractor Dalkia UK saw its profit plummet despite surging demand in the nuclear and energy sectors.
The London-based firm – a subsidiary of French state-run energy provider EDF – tabled a pre-tax profit of £312,000 in the year to 31 December 2024, down from £21.5m the year before.
However, a £15.8m loss from continuing operations in 2023 was offset by a profit of £37.3m from discontinued operations. These included its Suir Engineering business in Ireland, sold in January that year to private equity group Duke Street for £69.2m.
Dalkia UK chief executive Gautier Jacob confirmed a “strong sales performance” in 2024 “despite some headwinds in the UK construction market in the context of high inflation and interest rates”.
Turnover also increased to £609m, up slightly on the previous year’s £607.2m total (including £25.4m from discontinued operations), as Dalkia met its strategic objective to reach a turnover of £600m in 2024.
Dalkia’s cash at hand grew from £42.6m to £55.6m, although its annual dividend payout fell from £44.3m to £6.8m.
The firm’s workforce edged up from 4,019 to 4,064 staff, and its annual wage bill rose by 2 per cent to £204.3m.
Jacob said growth in the UK’s engineering sector had been “concentrated in our strategic sectors, with a notable expansion in the nuclear and energy sectors”.
The CEO also confirmed a “limited number of legacy projects” had continued to have an impact on Dalkia’s profit in 2024. While he did not elaborate, last year Dalkia reported a number of onerous contract losses from projects in Scotland and the Midlands.
The company did table a provision of £6.1m for loss-making contracts at the end of December, although the total was much lower than the £14.5m provision at the beginning of the year.
The contractor has also fully incorporated Spie UK into its business after it bought the firm for £43m in December 2022. Spie has since been rebranded as Dalkia Operations.
More than £1m in fees was paid to integrate Spie in 2024, comprising £1.1m of integration costs and £109,000 of redundancy costs. In the previous 12 months, it spent more than £1.7m on integration and redundancy measures.
Over the course of the year, Dalkia repaid a £15m loan to EDF Energy.
Jacob said he expected the business to “perform financially and operationally in the years to come” thanks to the “size and quality of our order book”. At the end of 2024, Dalkia’s forward orders totalled £1.1bn.
In the latest edition of the CN100 ranking, Dalkia was the UK’s 26th biggest contractor. It was also the biggest mechanical and electrical contractor in the UK.
Read More
Joshua Stein