JCB billionaire banks record £866m pay day
The billionaire Bamford family paid themselves £866m despite JCB’s sales and profit being slashed in 2024, it has been revealed.
The Staffordshire-headquartered manufacturer issued the huge dividend which was up significantly from the £300m it paid out in 2023.
The dividend total from 2023 had previously been JCB’s largest pay out in a decade until its latest set of results.
The figure has been revealed in new accounts filed with Companies House which also show JCB’s turnover turnover declined from £6.4bn to £5.8bn and its pre-tax profit also fell from £805.8m to £687.3m.
However, JCB also increased its headcount by more than 1,000 from 13,571 to 14,734 in the year.
During 2024, JCB made political donations of £30,000 to the Conservative Party, up from £25,000, while Conservatives Together received £50,000. The Midland Industrial Council was paid £272,000.
JCB is controlled by Lord Anthony Bamford after inheriting the company from its founder Joseph Cyril Bamford.
JCB battling declining markets
A statement signed off by the board said: “The global market for construction and agricultural equipment declined in 2024, finishing the year down 3.7 per cent versus 2023.
“However, the global dynamics were markedly different than 2023.
“The Chinese market has fallen c.70 per cent since 2021, stabilised and grown by 10 per cent in 2024.
“Similarly, other non-western countries exhibited market growth with Brazil growing by 24 per cent, Africa growing by 34 per cent and the Middle East growing by 15 per cent.
“Driving the global decline were the North American, European, UK and Pacific markets.
“All of these markets peaked during 2023 and entered 2024 on a downtrend.
“IN general, these downtrends were caused by manufacturers catching up with multi-year supply constraints post-Covid, coinciding with elevated interest rates put in place to tame demand and bring inflation under control.
“These downtrends, the first drop in market demand for many years noting that the Covid effect was more of a supply side shock, were substantial in many markets.”
JCB noted that the UK market fell by 24 per cent, there was an 18 reduction in Continental Europe and the Pacific region declined by 27 per cent.
The North American market “showed some resilience” and only fell by four per cent.
JCB added that the market outlook for 2025 is “moderately negative, with new geopolitical uncertainties, brought about largely through the protectionist trade prolixities of the new US administration”.