Contractor paid £1m for 45% stake in specialist which collapsed last year

Regional contractor Beard posted a record turnover last year but saw profit slip, the firm’s latest report and accounts have revealed.

The firm, which is based in Swindon, said construction turnover was up 14.5% to £165m but pre-tax profit was down 17% to £3.5m.

In accounts filed for EW Beard Ltd, the company’s net cash position at the year-end was £33.8m from £39.6m last time.

beard

Beard’s turnover hit a record last year but the firm was forced to write off nearly £900,000 on a failed investment in an offsite business

In separate accounts for EW Beard Holdings, which includes its construction and property businesses, the firm revealed it had to write off an investment in a failed offsite building firm last year.

Beard said the collapse of Green Unit, an Oxfordshire firm which specialised in low carbon, modular buildings and which claimed they were delivered to site “virtually complete”, meant it booked a £896,000 write off on its shareholding in the 2022 accounts.

In a note accompanying the results, Beard said Green Unit had been “unable to convert enough enquiries into orders”.

Beard sank £1m into acquiring its 45% share of the firm in October 2020 but Green Unit, which was set up in 2012, was liquidated last summer.

The £896,000 figure, which was lower than the £1m it initially shelled out because Beard took into account some of Green Unit’s net assets, took the gloss of an improved set of numbers at EW Beard Holdings which showed that pre-tax profit was up 8% to £3.3m on turnover up 14% to £165.5m. Without the £896,000 write off, pre-tax profit would have been up a third.

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