Ton Hillen, Heijmans CEO

“Royal Heijmans enjoyed a good and memorable six months. In early June, we rounded off a period in which we celebrated 100 years of Heijmans with a grand party where we were joined by thousands of employees and their partners. And the company was awarded the Royal predicate. The crowning of our work and that of the many generations before us.

As expected, the strong performance of Building & Technology and Infra more than offset the lower revenue at Property development.

On 21 June, we announced that we had reached agreement with Van Wanrooij Bouw & Ontwikkeling on the acquisition of this Brabant-based family business. The proposed transaction, which is subject to approval by the Dutch Consumer & Market Authority, strengthens Heijmans' market position in construction and property development in the Netherlands and doubles our property development work in hand to 29,000 new-build homes from approximately 15,000. Despite challenging market conditions in the housing market, this puts Heijmans in an excellent position to accelerate production as soon as the housing market recovers. After all, given the current housing shortage and demographic trends, the demand for housing will only increase in the future.

All our business areas once again performed well in the first half of 2023, within the strategic underlying EBITDA ranges set by Heijmans. Our revenue and result development was in line with the previous outlook we issued. As expected, the strong performance of Building & Technology and Infra more than offset the lower revenue at Property development.

Our Infra business area is managing to respond in an agile fashion to the central government's heavier emphasis on the replacement and renovation of the existing road network. We are also working on the flood protection programme and on shaping the energy transition. Building & Technology’s order book developed strongly, especially within the Services business units and on the large integrated projects front. At Property development, as expected, we saw a decline in revenue and margin that was in line with market trends. I am satisfied with the figure of 876 homes sold in the first half of the year. That may be a 15% decline on the comparable period last year, but it was higher than in the second half of 2022. The underlying indicators for the housing market remain healthy in the medium term, despite the current headwinds. Heijmans is therefore confident about the future."