Group chief executive Rick Willmott said that while pre-tax profits tumbled by a quarter to £15.7m the firm had delivered a resilient performance in a dire market.
He added that had the private builder not embarked on a diversification programme to develop new work streams it would have seen turnover shrink to £600m.
Instead sales remained steady at £1.03bn last year, with 85% of targeted work secured for 2013.
He said: “What is vitally important is the progress we continue to make in creating a platform for new growth, including an increasing pipeline of development work through our Regen division, the wider take-up of our Sunesis standardised designs, and contract and framework wins by our Energy Services company that launched successfully in 2012.
“Our contracting, housing and interiors companies held their market share, while also making progress in new markets.
“In our housing company we continue to complete up to 2,000 new homes a year working for RPs, private developers and our own ‘self-generated’ developments for our Regen division.
“The development market is a growing one for us and we are creating a formidable track-record for building homes for sale as demand in the market picks up.
“We’re also on the HCA’s regional frameworks, giving access to £4 billion of housing development over the next four years.”
In the tough market, Willmott Dixon is seeking to support subcontractors with greater payment certainty.
Its main tier subcontractors are being invited to use a newly developed web portal giving direct access to accounts payable records for full visibility of payment records and due dates.
Main trading performances
Construction: Turnover £641m (2011: £682m)
Housing: Turnover £171m (2011: £232m)
Interiors: Turnover £46m (2011:£42m)
Support services: Turnover £110m (2011: £83m)
Willmott warned that there was an on-going reduction in contract values in the mainstream construction division.
But project values in housing were on the rebound, rising steeply to create a more efficient business model with projected year on year growth potential of 20%.
Willmott Dixon is targetting the affordable, care, housing for sale and student accommodation sectors with around 60% of workload from the public sector and the balance coming from private developers and self-generated Willmott Dixon Regen developments
Its growing Regen business is expected to contribute up to 40% of group profit by 2016.
Over the year the staff head count rose from 2,845 to 3,138, due to 300 more site and production staff taken on at the support services business.
