US multidisciplinary consultant Aecom made a loss of $17m on turnover of $4.5bn in the third quarter results announced yesterday.
But the news wasn’t all bad -Â it reported strong cash flow and progress on debt reduction.
"We continue to execute well against the priorities we set at the beginning of the year," said Stephen Kadenacy, Aecom’s president and chief financial officer.
"This marks the third consecutive quarter of strong cash flow and debt reduction and keeps us on track with our capital allocation priorities."
Aecom chairman Michael Burke (Aecom)
Last October, Aecom bought US rival URS for $4bn, and it said yesterday that it was on track to make "full-year synergy savings" of $180m.
It also reported that its debt pile, partly accumulated through the purchase, was reduced by $95m; it expects to make a reduction of $550m in the current financial year.
The company expect its full-year interest expense to reach about $220m.
Michael Burke (pictured), Aecom’s chairman and chief executive officer, said: "We delivered $4.8 billion in wins and made substantial progress on our integration efforts. Additionally, we entered the final quarter of our fiscal year with strong momentum in our pipeline, which reflects the breadth of our capabilities as well as our broad geographic and end-market exposure."
The firm said it had performed well in its core American market, where its workload grew 2%.
Design and consulting accounted for $2bn of its earnings, an increase of 49%, but organic revenue decreased 4%.
The second largest earner was construction services, which made $1.7bn. On an organic basis, revenue increased 54% owing to a strong performance from the building construction business.
The third largest business division was management services. Here revenue increased almost 300% to $852m, owing to the addition of URS’s contracts.
