view on chairman & md's report, page-2

The pleasing result was their order backlog - up 28% from last year. This backlog has had 26% CAGR over the past 5 years. Only 30% relates to resources, with most of the rest being infrastructure related. Fixed price contracts are 35% of the total, and although it would be preferable for this to be lower, this proportion is slowly decreasing each year.

The project pipeline going forward is 4.3B, up 30% on last year - this isn't worth a lot until it is converted into orders ... but a growing pipeline is always better than a shrinking one.

EBIT margin last year was 3.4% compared to long term average of 3.5%. This was held down by the Haden division which accounts for 28% of revenue but with an EBIT margin of only 1.3%. Haden are in the HVAC market, where the largest competitor, Hastie held market margins low. I think this should now improve.

Compared to the overall contracting and engineering sector, Norfolk is looking good going forward.