Mears wins £50m contract

02/04/2009 Robert Tyerman

Social housing and domiciliary care specialist Mears Group has won a six-year repairs and maintenance contract with Shoreline Housing Partnership.

Fully listed Mears, steered by entrepreneurial chief executive Bob Holt, says the possibility of a four-year extension means the contract could be worth more than £80 million over ten years. The company already provides a range of services to Shoreline, a registered ‘social landlord’ that manages 8,200 homes in the Grimsby area.

Holt says Mears’s order book stands at £1.6 billion already, and the Shoreline contact ‘further enhances the visibility of future revenues’. Shares in the company (which raised pre-tax profits eight per cent to £16.6 million pre-tax last year on turnover up 38 per cent to £420 million) fell from 377.75p in 2007 to 195p last October, and have now rallied to 232p, valuing the company at £172 million. They stand to make further progress.

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