Announcing its financial results today, Downer also said underlying earnings before interest and tax had increased by 18.6% from the previous corresponding period to $346.5 million.

Total revenue was up 22.5% to $48.5 billion as a result of all the company’s businesses recording revenue growth.

Downer Mining’s revenues soared 67.9% to $2.5 billion, while revenues in its infrastructure division jumped 11.7% to $4.6 billion.

Downer chief executive Grant Fenn said the company had delivered on its promises.

“The strength of the business is clear in this result,” Fenn said.

“We now have a good handle on our input costs at the required rates of production.”

Fenn said its mining division had performed exceptionally well, with EBIT up 45.1% to $173.5 million on the back of securing new open cut mining contracts and receiving record levels of work in the blasting and tyre-management businesses.

“Downer Mining has done a great job minimising the growing pains normally associated with ramping up on such a scale,” Fenn said.

“There has been a lot of investment over the past two years and the mining business is delivering.”

Looking ahead, Downer said there was an increasing level of uncertainty around the level and timing of government and private sector investment in infrastructure in both Australia and New Zealand.

“That said, Downer is well positioned in terms of the percentage of work already secured that will impact on the year ahead,” the company said.

Downer is forecasting EBIT of around $370 million and NPAT of about $210 million for the current financial year.

Downer’s work in hand remains at about $20 billion.

Coinciding with its financial results, Downer announced that AXA and AllianceBernstein Australia had disposed of about 328,000 shares in the company to the sum of $933,961.

Shares in Downer were up 9% to $3.40 in morning trade.