NG Bailey recovers from pandemic hit and returns to black

M&E contractor NG Bailey returned to the black last year after the pandemic sent it nosediving to a £4m loss in 2021.

The impact of covid-19 that year saw it shell out more than £12m on redundancies and topping up the salaries of furloughed staff to send the firm to a £4.4m pre-tax loss in the 12 months to 26 February 2021.

But the firm’s latest report and accounts show that it recovered to post a £3m pre-tax profit in the year to 25 February 2022 – although still some way short of the £20.5m profit it posted for 2019/20.

Turnover was flat at £500m, slightly down from last year’s £507m, and 13% down on the £573m it posted in the year before the pandemic struck.

Income from its biggest division, engineering, slipped 9% to £267m but workloads at its services business, which includes facilities services and IT, recovered 9% to £232m.

It said the engineering business posted an operating loss of £5.1m which it blamed on the lag in construction’s recovery and a “small number of challenging contracts”. It added that this has led the firm to “embark on a three-year business plan that will see a return to pre-pandemic levels of profitability”.

Bailey’s order book was flat at £1.2bn but net assets, which include £79m of cash and investments, edged up to £147m from £142m.

The firm, which saw overall staff numbers drop 4% to 3,062 for the year, added that it had taken on 100 apprentices during the period as part of a target to recruit the highest number of apprentices for 15 years.

The firm added that it spent £700,000 on furloughed staff but £500,000 of this was offset by income from the government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.