The Edinburgh-based contractor said pre-tax profit for the year was £3.5 million, almost triple the £1.2m it made a year earlier. Revenue declined to £20.8m from £22.8m but this was more than offset by a decline in its cost of sales to £18.1m from £22.5m and by a one-off gain on a property revaluation.

Construction work in the year declined, hit hard by a fall in demand from the private residential sector, which offset a solid performance elsewhere in the business.

The group said: “Private residential sales will be more than last year. The first phase of our industrial development which commenced recently at Bellshill Industrial Estate, Glasgow is attracting healthy interest. Property values remain buoyant, however writedowns in certain instances cannot be ruled out.

“Taking the foregoing into account and the fragile state of the current economic recovery it is not possible at this stage to make an informed forecast of the outcome for the current year.”