STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Swedish builder Skanska on Friday reported a steep fall in fourth-quarter operating profit as property value writedowns weighed, and proposed a lowered dividend.
Operating profit at the Nordic region’s biggest builder, and one of the biggest in the United States, was 957 million crowns ($91.4 million) against a year-earlier 3.53 billion, despite a 4% sales increase.
Skanska in January warned it would in the quarter book 2 billion crowns worth of impairments and value changes across its property development operations due to weak markets, in particular within U.S. commercial real estate development.
(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom, editing by Terje Solsvik)
