Ramboll Group sees 28% growth in revenues in 2015
Overall profit for the year lower at $11.2m
The Denmark-based engineering and design consultancy Ramboll Group has announced a 28% increase in its 2015 revenues, despite challenging economic conditions.
The company, which has a large presence in the Middle East, says revenues increased by 24.5% in local currencies and by 27.7% in Danish kroner from DKK 8,292 million ($1.2bn) in 2014 to DKK 10,589 million ($1.5bn) in 2015.
Overall profit for the year sank however to DKK 75.4 million ($11.2m) as compared to 163.7 million ($24.4m) recorded in 2014.
Excluding the oil and gas business, organic growth was 4.5%.
Ramboll says that operating profit before goodwill amortisation (EBITA) came in at DKK 475 million ($70.9m) compared to DKK 413 million ($61.7m) in 2014. This resulted in an EBITA margin of 4.5%, which was 0.5 percentage points lower than last year.
Ramboll says that the lower EBITDA margin was a result of significantly lower performance in its oil and gas business units and write-downs on a few large building projects.
Along with its large scale projects in the Asia-Pacific region, Denmark and Canada, Ramboll has secured a contract in Saudi Arabia for a district cooling project, one of several initiatives to improve the conditions for pilgrims during hajj.
Ramboll’s CEO Jens-Peter Saul commented saying, “2015 has been a challenging year with a disappointing profit margin, mainly due to the impact of the dramatic drop in oil prices on our Oil & Gas business and related markets and project write-downs. Consequently, the performance has been mixed across our markets with solid performance in most of our Nordic business units, but less satisfactory results in some of our business units outside the Nordic region. When considering the very tough market conditions, the EBITA-result for 2015 is acceptable due to the improvements in our underlying business and the good performance in key markets.”
