“This was driven by excellent growth in North America, a strong performance in Europe, particularly in UK defence, and good growth in Rest of World.
“We maintained our strong margin whilst absorbing the increased mobilisation costs in Europe from the higher growth as well as strategic investments being made by the business.
“Our focus on efficiencies and pricing have continued to offset inflation and helped mitigate ongoing volume weakness in the UK and Continental Europe.”
Sales growth in the US reached 7.9%, in Europe it was 5.5%, while the rest of the world recorded 3.2%
The half-year revenue figure of £12.5bn represents a 5.8% rise in operating profit to £951m, with Blakemore saying that, ‘operating efficiencies offset higher mobilisation costs and investments to support strategic execution’.
He added: “We have continued to invest in the business to support the exciting long term growth opportunities. During the first half we spent £370m on bolt-on acquisitions, principally in North America.
“We have made further progress with our disposal programme and have now exited about 2% of revenues of non-core businesses. This active portfolio management had a positive impact on the margin in the first half.
“Following the very strong first half performance we now increase our organic revenue growth guidance for the full year and expect to deliver organic revenue growth and margin progression similar to 2018.
“We remain mindful of the macro uncertainty in parts of Europe and its impact on the business.”