Weak start for Bam

The longer than usual winter has dragged seasonally weak first quarter results at contractor Bam further down, but improvements are expected as the year goes on.

Revenues for the first three months of 2013 slipped 4% year-on-year to €1.4 billion, but gross income was up slightly to €5.2 million, compared to €3.5 million for the same period last year.

Chairman Nico de Vries said that in addition to reduced working days in civil engineering thanks to the harsh winter, “difficult conditions” had also continued in the Netherlands, particularly in the construction, maintenance and engineering and property markets. The overall order book was unchanged year-on-year at €10.7 billion.

“After the seasonally weak first quarter, we expect results to improve in the rest of 2013 despite on-going difficult conditions in our home markets. We continue to closely monitor conditions in our markets, in particular in the Netherlands, and especially our construction-related activities,” Mr de Vries said.

“Although it is still too early to give an outlook for the full year, at this stage we have no reason to expect that performance for the full year 2013 will be significantly different from our operational performance for 2012.”