German contractor Hochtief has seen a 20% increase in turnover to €33.3bn and a 48% rise in nominal net profit to €776m.
Announcing its 2024 results, chief executive Juan Santamaría said the strong performance reflected its “leading positions in the growth markets of datacentres, advanced technology, energy and social infrastructure”.
The company said it ended the year with an order book of €68bn, up €12.2bn year on year.
It added that it had implemented its policy of bidding for “lower-risk” contracts, which included risk-sharing mechanisms. These now account for more than 85% of its order book.
Around half of the company’s contract wins during 2024 related to its “strategic growth markets”.
These included a contract from Meta to build a datacentre campus in Louisiana worth more than $10bn. Hochtief’s datacentre order backlog at the end of 2024 stood at over €8bn, or 12% of the total.
It also won development rights for the 700MW Cobbora Solar Farm and associated large-scale battery energy storage system in New South Wales.
In Europe, highlights included the €1bn Dutch A15 public-private partnership (PPP) highway project, where its consortium has been named preferred bidder.
In the UK, the company was awarded a multi-million-euro PPP contract to design, build, finance and operate a student village for Staffordshire University, and in Hong Kong, it is executing a €2.6bn hospital expansion.
Santamaría commented: “Infrastructure sector investment is undergoing an unprecedented, and multi-year transformation, driven by digitalisation, demographics, decarbonisation and deglobalisation.
“Hochtief is well placed as a leading infrastructure and services provider to meet the rising demand that is being driven by these megatrends. In addition, we are further expanding our presence in the value-chain to allow us to deliver attractive solutions and create value by applying our engineering and construction know-how, our expertise as an equity investor as well as our operations and maintenance capabilities.”
Hochtief expects to maintain 2024’s performance this year, with a profit of between€680m and €730m.
Hochtief is controlled by Spanish contractor ACS.
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