Sisk’s pre-tax profits double

CONSTRUCTION giant John Sisk & Sons has said pre-tax profits last year more than doubled.

The company, one of the oldest firms in the country, said profits rose 110.3% to €85.4 million on the back of strong growth and the sale of property. At operating level, which excluded the exceptional gain, profits were a healthy 55% higher at €68.5m.

Group turnover was just over 31% higher at €1.54 billion, with around €1bn of this generated from its commercial building activities in Ireland.

The company is involved in the building of the new Marine Institute and the G Hotel in Galway as well as the 79,000 square metre Scotch Hall development in Drogheda and the Cork School of Music.

Bernard O’Connell, executive chairman of Sisk’s construction business, said 2005 was an excellent year for the building industry and further growth lay ahead.

“It was very busy; we’ve been expanding non-stop for the last five or six years, but we did have very a good year in 2005,” he told the Irish Examiner.

“We’re lucky that we have strong clients and we’ve bid four or five jobs for over €50m on the commercial side in the last few months not to mind the infrastructural projects we’re working on.”

He added that the company saw plenty of opportunities under the Government’s decentralisation plans.

In Britain, Sisk also had a good year with turnover of €380m last year. It is involved in refurbishing the Wembley Arena, the Intercontinental Hotel at Hyde Park in London and also building a distribution warehouse and corporate offices for Tesco in Coventry.

On the civil engineering side, Sisk said it is on course to have turnover of €100m by the end of next year. It is part of a number of consortiums working on public private partnership projects including a 40 kilometre section of the new Dublin to Cork motorway.

Mr O’Connell said he was confident that the construction sector would continued to expand over the next couple of years.