Bilfinger Berger recently announced a Q1 loss of US$5.8M for 2003.
However, the company’s management claimed that the quarter’s successes outweighed the losses. “First quarter earnings are always substantially lower than in the following three quarters due to industry-specific seasonal effects, and are therefore no indication of the earnings trend over the full year,” Herbert Bodner, executive board chairman, explained
Highlights for the quarter included: a 21% increase in output volume to US$1.33bn; orders received totalling US$1.73bn – an increase of 2% over the same period in the previous year; and an order backlog of US$4.76bn, 15% higher than a year before.
Bilfinger Berger also received US$638M following the sale of its 30.02% stake in Buderus AG. This means that “net profit will surpass last year’s high level,” Bodner said.
Together, the civil sector and the project development and concessions sector contributed US$523M to the bottom line.
