Nexus Infrastructure is an AIM-listed civil engineering group. It digs the roads, drains and utilities for housebuilders in South-East England and, since late 2024, does water and rail work too. Revenue has grown from £57m to about £70m in two years, but the group still makes a loss. In September 2026 it missed expectations and removed its chief executive, and the shares sit near 94p, well below the 165p of March 2025.
Groundwork for housebuilders, plus a water and rail arm
Nexus has two subsidiaries. Tamdown provides civil engineering and infrastructure work to the UK housebuilding sector, focused on the South-East of England. It turns 50 in 2026. Its customers are the big housebuilders: Bloor Homes, Bellway, Dandara, Vistry, Taylor Wimpey and Persimmon. Most of its work is on large multi-phase developments that run five to ten years, and it does the infrastructure early in each project.
Coleman Construction & Utilities, founded in 2000, builds projects in water, rail, highways, and rivers and marine. Its water work follows AMP cycles, five-year spending programmes set by the regulator Ofwat. AMP8 runs to 2030. Rail work follows a plan that runs to March 2029.
Tamdown is by far the bigger business: £29m of the £32m revenue in the half to March 2026. It earns gross margins of about 14%, against about 28% at Coleman. Group profit therefore depends mostly on how many housing sites are active and how well Tamdown prices and runs them. 14 May 2026 26 Feb 2026 15 May 2025
A sale, a customer failure and a housing slump
In February 2023 Nexus sold two other subsidiaries, TriConnex and eSmart Networks, and returned £60.5m to shareholders. That left Tamdown as the main trading business. Then housebuilding turned down: major developers cut budgets and postponed projects, and the housebuilder ilke Homes went into administration. Tamdown was hit hard by that failure.
For the year to September 2023 the group made an operating loss of £8.4m, against £0.3m the year before. The order book (work won but not yet done) fell from £95.5m to £46.0m. Management restructured the group and cut overheads by about £1.7m a year. The shares stood at about 82p in late 2023. 7 Mar 2024 3 Oct 2023 16 May 2024
Margins repaired, Coleman bought
Tamdown's gross margin rose from 5.8% in FY23 to 14.0% in FY25. Management credits cost discipline and productivity measures. New contract awards rose from £32m in FY23 to £56m in FY24 and £89m in FY25. Revenue fell to £57m in FY24 as the slump worked through, then rose 16% to £66m in FY25.
In October 2024 Nexus bought Coleman for up to £5.4m, with £3.1m paid up front. The stated aim was to reduce reliance on the cyclical housing market and to enter higher-margin sectors. Coleman has been integrated and now contributes a small operating profit. The shares more than doubled between April and June 2024. The company gave no reason, and the register changed sharply over the period: Ruffer and Keith Breen sold out, and Peter Gyllenhammar AB built a stake of about 29%. 30 Oct 2024 23 Jan 2025 26 Feb 2026 23 Oct 2025 23 Sep 2024 31 May 2024
Growth without profit, then a miss
FY25 closed with a pre-exceptional operating loss of £1.1m and an order book of £83.4m. The final results arrived late, in February 2026. The shares fell from 165p in March 2025 to 117.5p by the end of 2025.
In the first half of FY26 a wet winter curtailed site work, and the start of AMP8 was slower than management expected. Revenue rose 5.6% to £32.3m and the pre-exceptional operating loss narrowed to £0.8m. At the March 2026 AGM the Chair, Richard Kilner, and a non-executive director, Ffion Griffith, stepped down. Several resolutions had been withdrawn after shareholder engagement, and Clare Lacey became interim chair.
On 23 September 2026 the group said revenue for the year was £70.0m with a loss before tax of £1.0m, below expectations. The same announcement removed the chief executive. The contracted order book was £75.4m at 31 August. That is down from the £87.9m Tamdown order book reported in March, though the company framed it as a contracted figure. Cash was £8.7m. 26 Feb 2026 27 Feb 2026 24 Mar 2026 25 Mar 2026 14 May 2026 23 Sep 2026
“With a strengthened order book, disciplined execution and a diversified platform, we remain well placed to deliver full year results in line with market expectations” 14 May 2026
What explains the record
The first cause is dependence on housebuilders. When developers cut budgets in 2023, Tamdown's revenue and order book fell sharply, and the failure of one customer, ilke Homes, deepened the loss. Housing recovery has since come more slowly than management repeatedly said it expected.
The second cause is thin margins on a large cost base. Tamdown's margin gains helped, but they have not yet covered central and operating costs. The group has not reached the profitability that management set as a goal at the end of FY23. Coleman earns higher margins, but at about £3m of half-year revenue it is too small to carry the group. 7 Mar 2024 26 Feb 2026 14 May 2026 23 Sep 2026
Cost cuts worked; delivery and governance did not keep pace
Management, led by Charles Sweeney, set three aims at the end of FY23: grow with customers, expand into new markets and focus on financial delivery. It met several of them. Margins rose, central costs fell 21% in FY25, overdue debt fell about 40%, and Coleman was bought and integrated. It also kept paying dividends: 3.0p for FY25, and a 1.0p interim for FY26 for the fourth year running.
Execution has since slipped. The FY25 results were delayed, the Chair and a director left in March 2026 after shareholder engagement, and the chief executive was removed in September 2026. The Board now says its immediate focus is on improving operational execution, managing the cost base and keeping tight control of cash and working capital. A further independent non-executive director is still to be appointed. Insiders have kept buying small amounts: Sweeney in February 2026 and Lacey in September 2026, each about £10k. 26 Feb 2026 24 Mar 2026 25 Mar 2026 23 Sep 2026 30 Sep 2026 14 May 2026
“the Board's immediate focus is on improving operational execution, managing the cost base and maintaining a disciplined approach to cash and working capital.” 23 Sep 2026
Larger, still loss-making, with a thinner order book and no CEO
For the year to September 2026 the group reports revenue of £70.0m, up from £65.9m, and a loss before tax of £1.0m, against £1.6m the year before. Cash is £8.7m at 31 August 2026, down from £10.9m a year earlier. Net assets were £26.2m in March. The contracted order book of £75.4m was lower than in March, though £15.2m of work was secured in September alone.
The latest close was 94.5p on 21 October 2026, against 94.0p at the end of September. Full-year results come after 30 September. On 21 October Coleman won a £2m AMP8 water contract at Crowborough, lasting ten months. 23 Sep 2026 14 May 2026 21 Oct 2026
What the company expects, and what is unresolved
Management expects AMP8 water work to build momentum through FY27. The company said in March that Tamdown's second-half revenue would rise as it delivers the order book, and that the extra work would raise working capital needs. It has not given new numerical targets since the September miss.
The questions are open. Can Tamdown turn its order book into profit when the business still loses money on a half-year basis? Will AMP8 spending reach Coleman faster than it did in 2026? And who leads the executive team and the Board? The company has not said who replaces the chief executive. 14 May 2026 23 Sep 2026 21 Oct 2026
Written by AI from Nexus Infrastructure's own announcements since Oct 2023 · every paragraph links to its sources