The company, which earlier this year sold its non-housing construction arm to Kier Construction to focus on its Homes and STMS businesses, reported sales up 17% at £268.1m. Net pre-tax profits increased marginally to £500,000 but, when discontinued operations were factored out, the figure rose to £7.4m.

Chief exectuive Stewart Milne said that the performance of the company’s core business remained positive.

"Despite a challenging market and the cost of exiting construction and restructuring, we are performing well and have a balance sheet that remains as strong as it was prior to the downturn,"

Managing director Glen Allison said the results also proved the decision to focus on Homes and STMS had been right.

"We could not operate effectively in the construction market at our size and decided to focus on our profitable, growing core businesses," he said.

STMS managing director Alex Goodfellow said that after restructuring to reflect market conditions, which included the loss of 35 jobs at its Witney factory, the company was now in a "strong position".

"We have just had the busiest three weeks ever at Witney and are looking forward to an increase in productivity and profitability in the next year," he said.

He added that STMS had launched new products this year, including the Sigma OP1-OP4 open panel build system, and was launching a single skin party wall system soon.

It had secured several large contracts, including housing for the Commonwealth Games, and had now built eight pilot homes as part of the AIM4 low carbon construction consortium.