HBC swings to £1.24m profit and targets £110m turnover

By Amara Osei

HBC Construction turned a £1.65m pre-tax loss into a £1.24m trading profit in 2025, and it expects revenue to hit £110m this year. Turnover jumped 43% to £71m from £50m. That's a brisk reversal for a business that, until January, sat inside developer Henry Boot.

The figures cover the trading period just before the Construction arm was offloaded to a management buy-out team in January. So the accounts chart the exit runway, not the flight itself. The 2026 numbers will tell us whether the new owners can fly solo.

Which projects drove the recovery?

Four schemes carried the turnaround, according to HBC's financial update:

• Rotherham Markets
• Sheffield's National Centre for Child Health Technology
• ARK at Markham Vale
• The Beck Hill multi-storey car park in Bridlington

Delivery, not dealmaking, did the work. The company credits these jobs with driving both the revenue jump and the return to profit.

What did management say?

Finance director James Smith kept the prose measured: "2025 was a year of recovery and a significant return to profitability for HBC, springboarding us strongly into 2026."

He added: "It reflects the resilience of our teams, the loyalty of our clients and the disciplined commercial approach we've taken through a period of transition."

Smith also pointed past the current year: "With healthy secured turnover, a strong pipeline and a clear plan for controlled, sustainable growth, we are well positioned for continued progress throughout the remainder of 2026 and into 2027."

Every buy-out playbook contains those sentences. Few contain a 43% revenue rise to back them up. HBC's version, at least, has the numbers.

How big does HBC plan to get?

The company has budgeted for £115m turnover in 2027, built on a mix of secured contracts, pre-construction services agreements and negotiated and tendered opportunities. Current workload splits evenly between public and private sector clients, with project sizes aligned to a three-year business plan introduced earlier this year.

The growth is planned, in other words, rather than hoped for. Crossing the £100m barrier in 2026 would put HBC back at scale within two years of posting a loss — a recovery paced roughly like a decent fit-out programme: fast, but sequenced.