02/04/2006. EXPECTATIVAS-SUR. Sando increased its turnover, but profits did not rise.
Following a year in which activity was hampered by public Works stoppages, 2005 removed all doubt and confirmed the good health of Grupo Sando, with the biggest increase in volume of business in the whole decade. The solidity of the public works sector and the advances made by the real estate area consolidated the constructor’s results, which last year had a turnover of 540 million Euros, up 40% on 2004. This year, Malaga’s leading company in terms of revenues expects to surpass the 600 million mark.
Despite this rise in activity, gross profits remained at a similar level to the previous year (47.1 million). The modification is accounting criteria, the rising price of gasoline and cement, and the stoppages at quarries explain this reduced profitability, in the group’s opinion.
The engine of the Malaga-based group continues to be its construction division. Public works were responsible for 52.9% of Sando’s overall volume of business, with Sando having been awarded 2.44% of all public works contracts announced by Spain’s Ministry of Public Works. Nonetheless, the real estate division is striving to increase it contribution to Sando’s accounts.
Turnover for this division was up a huge 110% in 2005, reaching 102.1 million Euros. Last year work started on 534 homes, and this year we expect that figure to more than double: 1,300 units, as Luis Sánchez Manzano, the group’s Managing Director, confirms.
The company will remember 2005 as the year it began its foreign adventure, an adventure that saw the birth of Sando’s subsidiary Sando Inmobiliaria Polska in Poland, a starting point that we hope will allow us to introduce other company divisions into the Polish market. Its first operation will be the construction of a thousand homes in Warsaw.
