Construction group Strabag pays stable dividends despite drop in profits
Austria’s largest construction group, Strabag, earned less in the past financial year despite full order books. The operating result (EBIT) was around a fifth dropped to 706.4 million euros, the company announced on Thursday. This is the second highest EBIT in the company’s history. At 4.2 percent (previous year: 5.9 percent), the EBIT margin is above the target of at least 4.0 percent. In the previous year, the result had been shaped by positive influences in all segments, while an expected normalization had started in 2022, the group explained. The bottom line is that profit fell by 19 percent to a good 472 million euros. The shareholders should nevertheless receive a stable dividend of EUR 2.0 per share.
Construction output rose by ten percent to a record high of 17.74 billion euros. The order backlog increased to 23.7 (previous year: 22.5) billion euros at the end of the year and thus also reached a new record level. For 2023, Strabag expects a construction output of 17.9 billion euros and an EBIT margin of at least four percent.