TILL DEBT DO US PART

摘要

When Kier published its annual results last month, many expected the worst. Some had already taken a punt that the contractor was in deep trouble, by shorting its shares in anticipation of bad news and taking the chance to make a financial killing. In the end, the company calmed market nerves with its numbers, showing a 5% jump in turnover to £4.Sbn and a 9% rise in pre-tax profit to £137m. While it admitted a 17% increase in year-end net debt to £375m, the firm offered enough in the way of assurances on how it would reduce this over the next two years to ease the pressure on chief executive Haydn Mursell and his colleagues. The shorters have mostly drifted off. Concerns around Kier may have abated but issues around the way contractors operate remain. They are often heavily indebted, operating in volatile and competitive markets on wafer-thin margins.