ESSEN (dpa-AFX) - Well-filled order books continue to drive the construction group Hochtief forward. Sales and earnings increased in the third quarter. "Hochtief has positioned itself as a leading infrastructure and services provider and is well on track to meet the growing demand resulting from these megatrends," said CEO Juan Santamaría on Thursday at the presentation of quarterly figures. The MDax company, which is majority-owned by the Spanish infrastructure group ACS, confirmed its profit target for the year as a whole. The share lost 0.2 percent after the figures were published. However, the share price has risen by around 14 percent since the turn of the year.

The construction group announced in Essen that consolidated profit adjusted for special effects rose by almost 18 percent year-on-year to 149 million euros in the three months to the end of September. In the current year, Hochtief continues to expect an adjusted net profit of 560 to 610 million euros thanks to a good order backlog. In 2023, adjusted profit rose by a good six percent to around 553 million euros.

In addition to infrastructure projects, the company is also expecting a tailwind from the construction of data centers. Tech companies are investing a lot of money in the expansion of computing power due to growing data volumes and the AI trend.

The US subsidiary Turner alone received orders for data centers in the US worth USD 5.3 billion in the first nine months, wrote Santamaría, who is also the CEO of ACS, in a letter to shareholders. At the beginning of the current year, Turner received an order from the Internet company Meta to build a data center worth more than USD 800 million in the US state of Indiana. According to the Hochtief CEO, the Australian Hochtief subsidiary Cimic received contracts for the construction of data centers in Malaysia and Melbourne, Australia, in the past quarter.

Incoming orders rose by nine percent on a comparable basis to almost 10.8 billion euros in the three months to the end of September. The new orders included a number of projects in the areas of high technology, energy transition and infrastructure projects with a focus on sustainability, said Santamaría. At the end of September, the order backlog swelled to almost 66 billion euros.

Including special effects, Hochtief reported a profit of 143 million euros in the third quarter. This was a good quarter more than a year earlier. Turnover climbed by a good eight percent to 8.9 billion euros. This was mainly due to good business at the US subsidiary Turner. In addition, the Australian subsidiary Thiess has been fully included in the balance sheet since May. Hochtief increased its stake in the company in April.

Meanwhile, the Spanish parent company is creating the second-largest civil engineering and construction company in the United States by merging two Group holdings. Hochtief will hold 38.2 percent of the shares in the new company created by the merger of its subsidiary Flatiron and Dragados North America. ACS will hold the remaining 61.8 percent. The transaction is expected to be completed in the second half of the year./mne/niw/he