Drum roll, please… The CN100 2024 is now available for Construction News basic and CN Premium users.
The index ranks the top 100 contractors in the UK by turnover, based on accounts filed before 16 August 2024. We also include other indicators such as pre-tax profit, cash at hand and bank borrowings.
And this year there are new features, including:
- Cash/debt ratio
- Cash/turnover ratio
- Profit per employee
- Turnover per employee
Readers working for the biggest contractors will be interested to find out whether their firm rose or fell in this year’s table.
The top four – Balfour Beatty, Morgan Sindall, Kier and Laing O’Rourke – remain unchanged but Mace has moved up four places to fifth.
ISG (currently undergoing a sale process) stays in sixth. But the big movers in the top 10 are Wates (up three places to seventh), and Vinci, which has risen 10 places to eighth.
Royal Bam and M Group round off the top 10 contractors this year.
The biggest risers in the rest of the CN100 are Gratte Brothers and United Living, which are up 29 and 23 places respectively.
Conversely, some firms have stayed in the CN100 despite falling down the rankings. Cruden Holdings has dropped 28 places to 95th, while Seddon has just avoided relegation, at 100th, having finished in 74th position last year.
In an industry notorious for its profitability struggles, 19 of the 100 firms have posted negative profit margins, among them big names such as Bouygues UK (including Equans Regeneration), Sir Robert McAlpine, Laing O’Rourke and Willmott Dixon.
Just three firms have bucked the trend with double-digit profit margins: Portakabin (22 per cent), RJ McLeod (14 per cent) and Kajima Europe (12.8 per cent). Coincidentally or not, Portakabin and RJ McLeod changed ownership in the period following their most recent accounts.
In addition to the CN100 write-up, CN Premium subscribers can access the new-look CN Intelligence data hub to explore and filter all of this year’s CN100 tables – including new metrics
