Revenue up 16% at listed architect - but losses continue

An eight-fold increase in Russian work helped listed architect Aukett Fitzroy Robinson to a 16% increase in turnover in the year to 30 September 2011.

But AFR, which reported grim results in 2010, saw its pre-tax loss jump a third to £1.2m in 2011, from £787,000 the previous year.

Revenue at the firm’s Russian business rose from £416,000 to £3.6m, counteracting a drop in work for the practice’s other studios in the UK and Middle East.

Turnover across the practice as a whole rose from £7.9m to £9.2m.

AFR chief executive Nicholas Thompson said the increased loss reflected two exceptional items – a £215,000 loss resulting from the closure of the practice’s Warsaw studio last September and a £835,000 write-off of unpaid fees for a hotel scheme in Piccadilly in West London.

Thompson added that aside from these exceptional items, the architect reduced its loss last year to £394,000 and returned to a profit of £367,000 in the second half of the financial year.

AFR expects to post a full-year profit in this financial year.

The results reflect an improvement in fortunes for the architect, which saw turnover plummet 47% in 2010, from £14.9m in 2009 to £7.9m at year end 30 September 2010.

But AFR said it had restructured to adapt to lower workloads and attributed the increase in revenue last year to diversifying the business away from Moscow to the regions in Russia and robust performance for its London studio.

This week AFR revealed it had won a joint commission with PLP architects to design a major mixed-use development for Imperial College BBC’s former Wood Lane studios in west London.

Topics