CONSTRUCTION group J Smart & Company has warned that its year-end underlying profits will be down on 2016 numbers in spite of increasing half year profit and revenue.

The Edinburgh-based group said that its workload has decreased and margins remained “disappointing” heading into the second half.

Pre-tax profit for the six months to January 31 was up 23 per cent to £652,000 as revenue climbed 26 per cent to £12m. But the AIM-listed builder said in its half year report that “because of costs arising from redundancies and reduced turnover in the second half of the financial year we will not achieve last year’s underlying profit”.

The group also said that private residential sales numbers for the current financial year will be substantially less than the previous year.