UK Construction and Law
A groundworks and concrete frame group turned a fifth off its turnover into a fifteen per cent rise in profit, and says final account completions did it
By Staff Writer | 24 August 2026
Accounts filed at Companies House show turnover down from 367,196,000 pounds to 293,671,000 pounds in the year to 31 March 2026, while profit before tax rose from 21,847,000 pounds to 25,130,000 pounds. The margin went from 5.95 per cent to 8.56 per cent. The chairman attributes the result in part to successful final account completions.
OHOB Holdings Limited is the parent of a group whose principal trading company, O'Halloran & O'Brien Limited, is a building and civil engineering contractor doing groundworks and concrete frames. The group also holds a plant hire business, a residential developer, a special projects builder, a utilities contractor and, new during the year, an urban residential development partnership vehicle. It has traded since 1972 and is in its fifty fifth year.
The headline table in the strategic report runs four years. Turnover of 293,671,000 pounds this year against 367,196,000 pounds last year, 312,970,000 pounds in 2024 and 348,274,000 pounds in 2023. Profit before tax of 25,130,000 pounds against 21,847,000 pounds, 21,064,000 pounds and 20,340,000 pounds. Profit margin of 8.56 per cent against 5.95, 6.73 and 5.84. Net assets of 223,247,000 pounds against 204,737,000 pounds. Profit after tax was 18,509,988 pounds, up from 16,987,315 pounds, and no dividend is recommended.
Where the margin came from
Turnover fell by a fifth and profit rose by fifteen per cent. That combination is not produced by winning work. The chairman states the cause in the report he signed.
despite turnover reduced to £294 million, despite price increases, continuing challenging economic conditions and global turbulence, the directors are pleased to report profit of £25 million, which was helped by some successful final account completions
T F O'Brien, Chairman of OHOB Holdings Limited, in the group strategic report he approved and signed on 28 July 2026
Two and a half percentage points of margin on nearly 300 million pounds of turnover is a commercial outcome on work already built, not an operational one.
The rest of the commentary is consistent with that reading. The report names the group's monthly cost value reporting system and its review meetings as the control that surfaces variances and cost overruns in time to be dealt with, and it identifies the group's credit risk as sitting mainly in trade debtors and amounts recoverable on contracts. Those are the two things that decide whether a final account settles at a number the contractor can bank.
Why the turnover fell, and what happens next
The report is direct about the cause of the volume reduction. Activity has been held back for several years, mainly by planning delays to tall residential schemes awaiting the resolution of Building Safety Act requirements. The chairman then says those delays are at last beginning to be resolved, and that the group expects to return to previous turnover levels over the next two years, with increased demand likely to lift pricing across the board.
The balance sheet is built for that. Net assets strengthened from 205 million pounds to 223 million pounds, cash at bank stands at 91 million pounds, and the report records no loans and no overdrafts. A further 11.4 million pounds went into new plant and equipment during the year, and 941 days of training were delivered.
For anyone assessing this group as a subcontractor, an employer or a competitor, the numbers say three things. The order book is thinner than it was. The margin is being made on settlement rather than volume. And the company is financed well enough to sit out a negotiation, which is precisely the position from which final accounts complete on favourable terms.