Despite revenue edging up from £750m to £770m, the Royal BAM-owned contractor suffered a 40% fall in profit to £15m from a previous 10-year high of £26m in 2018.
This weakened performance saw operating margin slide from 3.3% to 1.8% over the year.
New BAM Nuttall chief executive Adrian Savoury, who replaced Steve Fox last summer, said the firm would be setting out a new three-year strategy for the business.
He said the main focus for the business, which employs around 3,000 staff, would be to maintain focus on securing sustainable revenue and result through careful selection, bidding and delivery of projects.
He added: “Another component of the strategy involves the company being at the forefront of digital construction and data management techniques.”
Savoury added: “Our portfolio is dominated by frameworks and early contractor involvement where we can better build relationships to enable us to reduce project risk for all parties, identify more sustainable, lower carbon solutions, increase the use of digital techniques and build more components off-site.”
Last month BAM’s UK building business revealed its pre-tax profit more than halved in 2019 to £9.4m after a provision for its problem University of Sheffield project.
Recorded revenue was slightly down at £930m resulting in a profit before tax margin of 1% (2018: 2.1%).