Rogers Stirk Harbour offsets slump with overseas work
The Da-An project in Taiwan will be run from the new Shanghai office.
Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners has made up for a major drop in British work by expanding overseas, its latest accounts reveal
Results for the practice for the year ended June 30, 2010, show a 31% drop in turnover to £17 million, with pre-tax profit also decreasing by 42% to £607,000.
But RSHP senior commercial director Andrew Morris said the firm had “anticipated the drop”, making 35 staff redundant in March 2009.
“We anticipated this period would be the worst for us given the economic circumstances,” he said. “But given the action we took, although our turnover decreased our profit margins remained the same.”
Over the 12 months to June 2010, RSHP saw turnover from work in the UK halve to £8 million, while turnover in Australia - boosted by the Barangaroo project in Sydney = increased five-fold to £3 million.
The firm also revealed it had recently opened an office in Shanghai, which will take on RSHP’s work in the Far East.
“Our director from Japan has moved to the new office and we have a number of leads there and clients flocking to us,” said Morris, who added that two projects in Taiwan and Chengfeng, China, had been won on the back of its One Hyde Park luxury residential development in central London.
Meanwhile, the resurrection of major projects in the UK including the Cheesegrater at Leadenhall has helped boost staff figures past 2009 levels, with some 180 people expected to be employed in 2011/12, compared to 126 in 2010.
“Leadenhall is the big one,” said Morris. “The tenders went in on Friday with a view to starting on site later this year.”
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Readers' comments (3)
jeez loueeze
706,000 profit on turnover of 17M
if they are saying that the profit margin remained unchanged..
that's a margin of 0.03% does anyone know if this is typical?
i think its time to buy that domino's franchise soon if so...
my bad
thats a margin of 4.15%...but still is that the going rate for profit margin in architecture?
anyone?
ok the power of google..
here we go, so architecture is not the worst in terms of profit margin...poor house builders though!
Top industries: Most profitable
Return on Revenues
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on Assets
Return on Shareholders' equity
Industry Rank Industry 2007 Profits
as % of
Revenues
1 Network and Other Communications Equipment 28.8
2 Mining, Crude-Oil Production 23.8
3 Pharmaceuticals 15.8
4 Medical Products and Equipment 15.2
5 Oil and Gas Equipment, Services 13.7
6 Commercial Banks 12.6
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8 Entertainment 12.4
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18 Utilities: Gas and Electric 7.9
19 Industrial and Farm Equipment 7.6
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21 Hotels, Casinos, Resorts 7.3
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29 Petroleum Refining 6.2
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33 Home Equipment, Furnishings 5.3
34 Wholesalers: Diversified 4.3
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39 General Merchandisers 3.5
40 Health Care: Medical Facilities 3.3
41 Pipelines 3.1
42 Engineering, Construction 2.8
43 Health Care: Pharmacy and Other Services 2.6
44 Food and Drug Stores 2.1
45 Wholesalers: Electronics and Office Equipment 1.6
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49 Food Production 1.0
50 Semiconductors and Other Electronic Components 0.6
51 Diversified Financials -0.9
52 Homebuilders -9.5