(Reuters) – Italy’s largest construction company Webuild raised its financial targets for 2025 on Thursday after reporting 2024 revenue and core profit above guidance, which lifted its shares 7% to their highest since January 2018.
Webuild, which has active construction projects worldwide including Saudi Arabia’s NEOM gigaproject, said its strong performance was connected to a high-quality order book and initiatives to lower operating costs.
The group also proposed a dividend of 0.081 euro ($0.09) for every ordinary share, higher than last year’s 0.071, and a payment of 0.26 euro for every saving share.
By 1519 GMT shares traded up 6.% to 3.45 euros. They have increased 14.5%​ so far this year.
The group now expects 2025 revenue to exceed 12.5 billion euros, up from a previous target of up to 11 billion euros, and core profit to exceed 1.1 billion euros, previously forecast at 1.05 billion euros.
It posted adjusted revenue of 12.0 billion euros and adjusted core profit of 967 million euros, beating its own guidance for above 11 billion euros and above 900 million euros respectively.
It won 13 billion euros worth of new orders in 2024, 80% of which abroad.
($1 = 0.9208 euros)
(Reporting by Alberto Chiumento in Gdansk; editing by Milla Nissi, Louise Heavens, Alexandra Hudson)
