For its financial year ended December 31, 2020, Nigeria’s leading construction company, Julius Berger PLC grew its Total Assets by 4.9percent to N329 billion from N317 billion recorded in the previous year. This was as the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic could not stop the company from raising its turnover to N 242 billion, with a Profit Before Tax of N3.9 billion.
With an operational cash-flow of +N6 billion, Julius Bergercontinued implementing strategic investments amounting to N10 billion within the period.
Details of the firm’s results released by the Security and Exchange Commission, SEC, indicate that it was able to overcome temporary shutdowns of its construction sites in the second quarter of 2020 by utilising its strong base of personnel and capital resources. Given the industry-wide disruptive effects of the global pandemic and its attendant operational quarantine and slowdowns on businesses and supply chains as well as other interplaying scenarios all through the 2020 operating year, the board said the company remained resiliently sustained its well-rooted technical and administrative resourcefulness as well as its financial stability and wellbeing.
“Julius Berger continues to maintain its historical and robust resilience to top the class and retained the driving seat of the engineering construction sector.” Said the Chairman. Looking at the result from Julius Berger industry experts and analysts submitted that the fact that the Company worked in such a focused way to successfully improve on its turnover to maintain a leading edge in the construction sector despite the operational threats occassioned by the global pandemic. This is a clear plus for the country’s engineering construction leader.
Comparatively, financial institutions and network providers in the telecommunication sub-sector for example during the lockdown still very much enjoyed huge patronage via electronic operations and from providing remote essential services even at reduced overhead expenses.
In the case of the construction sector in general, only the fittest such as the operationally strong and healthy Julius Berger brand, sustained investor confidence and continued to thrive. The lockdown period heavily impacted on the construction sector’s operations amidst restrictions as only small windows of operations opened. It is therefore even more noteworthy that the company, according to industry insiders, opted to take seriously its sector leadership responsibilities, and did not sack any staff while the lockdown lasted.