Moury Construct SA (MOUR.BR) - Deep Dive Research Report

Sector: Industrials / Construction & Engineering · Listing: Euronext Brussels · ISIN BE0003602134 · Fiscal year-end: 31 December · Reporting cadence: half-yearly

Report date: 11 July 2026. Most recent reporting period: FY2025 (year ended 31 December 2025), results released 20 March 2026. The next release, the H1 2026 half-year report (period ended 30 June 2026), is due around September 2026 and has not yet occurred.

1. What the Company Does

Moury Construct builds and renovates buildings in Belgium. That is the whole business, and it has been for more than a century. If you want an office block in Liège, a hospital wing, a school, a sports hall, an industrial warehouse, a block of apartments, or a heritage building restored, Moury is a general contractor that will manage the project from the ground up: it wins the tender, coordinates the trades, pours the concrete, raises the structure, and hands over the keys. Increasingly it also does the specialist work itself - the carpentry, the metal and aluminium joinery, and, since 2023, the heating and ventilation - through wholly owned subsidiaries, so that more of the value on a given job stays inside the group.

The company was founded in 1920 in Liège and is still run by the Moury family, now into its fourth generation. That continuity is the single most important fact about the business. The family controls roughly 60% of the shares, the share count has barely moved in decades, and the company is managed the way a family manages its own money: conservatively, with a very large cash buffer and no appetite for the debt-fuelled, thin-margin megaproject bidding that has repeatedly hurt larger Belgian contractors. Moury is headquartered in Ans, on the edge of Liège, and employs a little over 350 people across the group.

The core value proposition is unglamorous and durable. Construction is a local, relationship-driven, reputation-driven business. A public authority commissioning a school, or a developer building offices, is handing a contractor a large sum of money years before the building exists, and trusting that contractor to deliver on time, on budget, and without going bankrupt mid-project (which contractors do, often). Moury's answer to that trust problem is a 100-year track record in its home region, a fortress balance sheet that reassures any client the firm will still be standing at handover, and a reputation for execution in the Wallonia and Liège market it knows intimately. It does not try to be a national champion or an international player. It wins by being the safe, competent, well-capitalised local contractor.

What makes the business hard to replicate is not a patent or a machine - it is the accumulation of local relationships, prequalification credentials for public tenders, a skilled workforce, and a balance sheet strong enough that clients never worry about counterparty risk. Those things take decades to build, which is precisely why a 1920-founded family firm still holds a strong position while capital keeps trying and failing to industrialise construction.

A concrete example of the work: on a typical non-residential job - say a school or a sports hall for a Walloon municipality - Moury bids the public tender, wins on a combination of price and prequalification, then acts as general contractor. Its own Entreprises G. Moury division runs the structural build; Mosabois fabricates and installs the interior wooden carpentry and the thermal/acoustic insulation; Bemat supplies the metal and aluminium joinery; and D-FI installs the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning. Instead of subcontracting all of that to third parties, Moury captures the margin on each trade internally, controls the schedule, and reduces the coordination risk that sinks so many construction projects.

2. Business Segments

Moury describes its activity as organised around three "poles" of construction work, delivered through a set of specialist subsidiaries. The three commercial poles and the subsidiary structure are two different ways of cutting the same business, so this section covers both: first the three activity poles (how revenue is generated), then the specialist subsidiaries (how the work is executed and where the internal capability lives).

The three activity poles

Non-residential construction. This is the heart of the business: offices, industrial and logistics buildings, commercial space, hospitals, schools, and sports halls, for both public authorities and private clients. It is where Moury's general-contracting capability, prequalification credentials, and project-management depth matter most, because these are the large, complex, multi-year jobs. Public-sector work (schools, hospitals, sports facilities) is an important part of this pole and brings both stability - governments keep building through downturns - and the friction of tender processes and payment timing. This pole drives the bulk of group revenue.

Renovation and maintenance. Repair, modernisation, and upkeep of existing buildings, residential and non-residential. Renovation is structurally attractive in Belgium: the building stock is old, energy-efficiency regulation is forcing upgrades, and renovation work is less cyclical than new-build because it is driven by the existing stock rather than by new demand. It is also a natural fit for the group's in-house trades (carpentry, insulation, HVAC), which are exactly what a deep energy renovation requires.

Residential construction (housing). New homes and apartment buildings, both for third parties and for the group's own account through Moury Promotion, the real-estate development arm. This is the most cyclical pole, exposed to interest rates and housing affordability, and the smallest of the three. Moury Promotion lets the group originate its own projects rather than only bidding for others', capturing developer margin, but it is deliberately kept modest relative to the contracting business.

The specialist subsidiaries

Les Entreprises G. Moury (GM) - the main general-construction entity, the operating core that runs the structural building work and acts as general contractor on the group's projects.

D-FI (the Ourth'Invest group) - HVAC (heating, ventilation, air-conditioning). This is the most significant recent addition. Moury acquired the Ourth'Invest group, whose principal subsidiary is D-FI, in May 2023 for €9 million, financed from its own cash. D-FI is based in Chanxhe near Sprimont, employs roughly 87-90 people, and brings nearly 30 years of HVAC expertise plus the regulatory certifications (D16 sanitary/heating, D17 central heating class 7, D18 ventilation class 6) that let it bid technical mechanical work. In 2025 D-FI generated €17.5 million of sales (up 20%), €2.5 million operating profit, €1.85 million net profit, and carried a €24.45 million order book. Strategically it is the group's vertical-integration bet: HVAC is a large and growing slice of any modern building's cost (driven by energy-efficiency rules), and owning that capability keeps the margin in-house and strengthens Moury's renovation offer. Management deliberately kept D-FI's existing management and operational independence in place - a light-touch integration approach.

Mosabois (SA Menuiserie Mosane) - wooden carpentry (menuiserie) and thermal/acoustic insulation, based in Ans, working principally for the group. Small in absolute terms (€4.24 million sales in 2025, up from €3.57 million in 2024; €374k net profit; €4.65 million backlog at February 2026) but strategically it internalises the interior fit-out trade. Recent work included interior carpentry on a sports hall and an aquaculture research platform, plus fit-out of 360 apartments.

Bemat - metal fabrication and aluminium joinery. Supplies the metalwork and aluminium window/facade elements on group projects.

Mourylux - historically a general public/private works company, consolidated into the group since 1998; in recent years it has mainly provided advisory and assistance services to other group subsidiaries rather than operating as a standalone contractor.

Moury Promotion - the real-estate development arm, originating residential and mixed-use projects for the group's own account.

Segment summary

Note the group does not publish a clean revenue split by pole or subsidiary in its public releases; the figures above for individual subsidiaries are the disclosed ones, and the pole descriptions are qualitative. The dominant revenue driver is unambiguously the non-residential general-contracting activity.

3. Products and Business Detail

Moury's "product" is a finished building and the general-contracting service that delivers it. The catalogue is best understood as building types crossed with the internal trades the group can self-perform.

Building types delivered: office buildings; industrial and logistics facilities; commercial/retail space; hospitals and healthcare buildings; schools and educational facilities; sports halls and leisure facilities; apartment buildings and individual houses; and heritage/renovation projects on existing stock. Recent named project types disclosed by the subsidiaries include a sports hall, a scientific aquaculture platform, and a 360-apartment residential development, spanning the public, research, and private-residential markets.

Internal trade capabilities (what Moury can self-perform rather than subcontract):

• Structural construction and general contracting (Entreprises G. Moury)
• HVAC - heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, sanitary (D-FI), backed by D16/D17/D18 certifications
• Wooden carpentry and thermal/acoustic insulation (Mosabois), holding D5 class 5 and D4 class 1 certifications
• Metal fabrication and aluminium joinery (Bemat)
• Prefabrication of concrete elements
• Real-estate development and promotion (Moury Promotion)

The certifications matter more than they look. In Belgium, contractors need class-based "agréation" (accreditation) to bid public works of a given size and technical category; the class ceiling limits the size of contract a firm can legally hold. Holding the right classes across structural, HVAC, carpentry, and metal categories is what allows the group to prequalify for large integrated public projects and to self-deliver the trades within them. That accreditation is earned over years of track record and cannot be bought off the shelf, which is a genuine barrier.

Manufacturing / delivery process: This is project-based construction, not factory manufacturing, so "capacity" is really skilled labour, equipment, and balance-sheet capacity to carry work-in-progress. Moury does have some prefabrication (concrete elements, carpentry fabrication at Mosabois) that shifts part of the value chain off-site, improving quality control and schedule, but the core model is on-site general contracting. The binding constraints are (1) availability of skilled labour and qualified subcontractors, (2) the accreditation classes that cap contract size, and (3) working-capital capacity to fund projects between milestone payments - a constraint Moury has essentially neutralised by sitting on a very large net-cash pile (~€116 million), which lets it carry work and pay suppliers without the liquidity stress that pushes weaker contractors into distress.

Geography: Moury is a Belgian - specifically Wallonia/Liège-centred - contractor. It does not have a meaningful international footprint, and that is deliberate. Its edge is local: local relationships, local prequalification, local reputation. It sells almost entirely into its home market, which insulates it from currency and foreign-country execution risk but also caps its addressable market to Belgian construction demand.

Milestones that shaped the business: foundation in 1920 in Liège; four generations of family management; consolidation of Mourylux (1998); the 2023 acquisition of the Ourth'Invest/D-FI HVAC group for €9 million (the group's most consequential capability expansion, adding mechanical services in-house); and the step-change in scale in 2025, when consolidated revenue jumped 33.9% to €249.6 million with a record order book.

4. Customers

Moury's customers fall into two broad camps, and the buying dynamic differs sharply between them.

Public authorities - Walloon municipalities, provinces, regional bodies, hospital and school networks - commission a large share of the non-residential work (schools, hospitals, sports halls, public buildings). The buying process here is the public tender. The decision-maker is a procurement authority applying formal award criteria - price weighted against technical capacity, prequalification class, references, and sometimes environmental criteria. Sales cycles are long and bureaucratic; the contractor must be accredited in the right class to bid at all. Once won, these contracts are relatively secure (governments pay, and rarely cancel mid-build), but payment timing can be slow and margins are competed down by open tendering. The great advantage of public work is counter-cyclicality: public building continues, and often accelerates, when private construction stalls.

Private clients - developers, industrial companies, commercial owners, and homebuyers - commission offices, industrial buildings, commercial space, and housing. Here the decision-maker is a developer's project director or a company's facilities/property team, and the buying criteria weight reputation, reliability, and relationship more heavily than a pure tender score. Sales cycles are shorter and more negotiated; repeat business and word-of-mouth matter enormously. Private work is more cyclical - it dries up when interest rates rise and developers pause - but tends to carry better margins than open public tenders.

Why customers choose Moury: the reasons are specific to this kind of business. First, counterparty safety - a client handing over a multi-million-euro building contract wants absolute confidence the contractor will not fail mid-project, and Moury's century of continuity plus its fortress balance sheet is a direct answer to that fear. Second, prequalification - Moury holds the accreditation classes to bid large integrated public works. Third, self-delivery - because the group can perform structure, HVAC, carpentry, and metalwork in-house, it reduces the coordination and reliability risk of a stack of independent subcontractors. Fourth, local knowledge of the Liège/Wallonia market and its clients, planning authorities, and labour pool.

Switching costs and lock-in: construction is project-by-project, so there is little contractual lock-in of the recurring-revenue kind. The "stickiness" is reputational and relational: a public authority or developer that has had a good experience returns, and prequalification plus references create a moat against new bidders rather than a lock on any individual customer. There is no installed-base or qualification lock-in like a component supplier would have.

Concentration: revenue is spread across many projects and clients rather than concentrated in one or two accounts - the risk in this model is project-level (one big job going wrong) and cycle-level (demand turning down), not single-customer dependency. This is healthier than a customer-concentrated supplier, but it means the order book, not a contract renewal, is the key forward indicator.

Contract structure and revenue predictability: work is contract-by-contract, typically fixed-price or milestone-based general-contracting agreements spanning months to a few years, recognised over the life of the project. The order book (carnet de commandes) is therefore the crucial visibility metric. At 28 February 2026 it stood at €371.5 million - a book-to-bill of about 1.49x against 2025 revenue - meaning the group had well over a year of work already signed. That backlog is what converts a lumpy, project-driven business into a reasonably visible forward revenue stream, and its growth (from €335 million at mid-2024 to €371.5 million in early 2026) is the single best evidence that demand is intact.

5. Competitive Landscape

Belgian construction is a fragmented, intensely local, low-margin industry at the bottom and a concentrated, capital-intensive one at the top. Moury sits in a deliberately chosen middle-to-upper-regional niche: too big and well-capitalised to compete with the thousands of small local builders, too focused and disciplined to chase the international megaprojects that occupy the giants.

At the top of the market sit the large Belgian contractors - BESIX (private, Brussels; group revenue roughly €3.7 billion; a genuinely international contractor active across Europe, the Middle East, and beyond) and CFE / Compagnie d'Entreprises (Euronext Brussels: CFEB; approximate market cap ~US$360 million / ~€330 million as of June 2026; active in Belgium, Luxembourg, and Poland). These are far larger, more diversified, more leveraged, and more exposed to complex civil and international work. They are competitors on the very largest Belgian building projects but operate in a different weight class and with a different risk appetite. Moury does not try to win the projects that define their business.

In its own regional non-residential and renovation niche, Moury competes with a set of mostly private Belgian contractors: Willemen Groep (private, Mechelen - one of the largest family-owned Belgian builders), Democo (private, Hasselt), Jan De Nul (private, Aalst - though its core is dredging and marine, it has a large building arm), Les Entreprises Louis De Waele (private, Brussels), Thomas & Piron (private, Wallonia-focused, strong in residential), and numerous smaller regional players. Most direct competitors are privately held, which is typical of the industry and means public market-cap comparisons are only available for the listed few.

Why Moury wins where it wins: in its regional niche the edges are (1) balance-sheet strength that reassures clients and lets it carry work without stress - a real differentiator in an industry where contractor insolvency is a live client fear; (2) prequalification breadth plus in-house multi-trade self-delivery; (3) a century of local reputation and relationships; and (4) capital discipline - the family runs it for durable returns, not revenue vanity, so it avoids the loss-making mega-bids that periodically damage larger contractors.

Where it is exposed: it is small and geographically concentrated. It cannot bid the largest and most technically complex projects that the giants take. Its addressable market is Belgian - really Walloon/Liège - construction demand, so it lives or dies by the local building cycle. And in open public tenders it competes largely on price against equally competent regional rivals, which caps margins on that slice of work (offset by the higher-margin private and self-delivered trade work).

Barriers to entry are real but bounded. Accreditation classes, references, skilled labour, and the capital to fund work-in-progress keep out casual entrants and cap what small builders can bid. But there is no technological moat, no patent, no network effect - it is a reputation-and-balance-sheet business. Margins in the industry are structurally thin, and Moury's above-average profitability (a ~15% operating margin in 2025, and a very high historical return on invested capital) reflects disciplined project selection, self-delivery, and a lean family-run cost base rather than a defensible monopoly. This is not a moat narrative to oversell: it is a well-run, well-capitalised regional contractor in a competitive, cyclical trade, and the "edge" is operational and financial discipline compounding over a very long time.

6. Industry

What drives demand. Moury's revenue tracks Belgian construction activity, which is driven by several distinct demand streams. Public infrastructure and social building (schools, hospitals, sports facilities) is driven by government budgets and, importantly, EU-funded and regionally-funded programmes. Renovation is driven by the age of the Belgian building stock and, increasingly, by energy-efficiency regulation - the EU's Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and Belgian/Walloon renovation obligations are forcing owners to upgrade insulation, heating, and ventilation, which is directly why Moury's HVAC (D-FI), insulation, and carpentry (Mosabois) capabilities matter. Private non-residential (offices, logistics, industrial) tracks business investment and interest rates. Residential tracks mortgage rates and affordability.

Size and trajectory. Belgian construction is a multi-tens-of-billions-of-euros annual market; Moury, at roughly €250 million revenue, is a small regional participant with room to keep taking share within Wallonia without ever needing the whole country. The structural growth vector is renovation and energy retrofit - the part of the market that is regulation-driven and least cyclical - which is where the group has been building capability. New-build residential is the softest part of the current cycle, pressured by higher rates.

Where Moury sits in the supply chain. As a general contractor, Moury is the integrator: it sits between the client (public or private) and the trades/materials suppliers. Its 2023 move into HVAC pushed it further down the value chain into mechanical services, capturing margin that would otherwise leak to subcontractors. It buys materials (concrete, steel, timber, glazing) as inputs, which exposes it to construction-input inflation - a real margin risk on fixed-price contracts, mitigated by indexation clauses and by self-delivering more of the work.

Regulation. The industry is heavily regulated: contractor accreditation classes gate who can bid what; building codes, safety, and environmental rules shape the work; and public-procurement law governs the tender process. Energy-performance regulation is a tailwind (it creates renovation demand), while procurement bureaucracy and slow public payment are frictions.

Cyclicality. Construction is one of the most cyclical industries there is, but Moury's mix softens it. Public and renovation work is far less cyclical than private new-build; the group's tilt toward public non-residential and renovation, plus its enormous net-cash cushion, means it can keep bidding and working through downturns when leveraged rivals retrench. The 2024 revenue dip (-4%) followed by the 2025 surge (+34%) shows both the lumpiness of a project business and the group's ability to ride it out and rebound as projects that were in start-up phase moved into full execution.

Tailwinds: the energy-renovation wave; public/social infrastructure spending; reshoring/industrial building; and the group's own vertical integration into HVAC. Headwinds: input-cost inflation on fixed-price work; skilled-labour scarcity; higher interest rates depressing private residential; and the perennial thin margins and insolvency risk that characterise the trade.

7. Growth Triggers

Moury does not hold earnings calls; the statements below are drawn from its half-yearly and annual reporting releases (the equivalent management communication for a Belgian half-yearly reporter). Each is cited to the specific release.

• Record order book underpinning forward revenue. The order book reached €371.5 million at 28 February 2026, a book-to-bill of about 1.49x against 2025 revenue, giving well over a year of secured work heading into 2026. (FY2025 results release, 20 March 2026.) This backlog had already been building - €335 million at 30 June 2024 (H1 2024 report, September 2024) - so the trajectory is a repeated, strengthening theme across releases.

• Projects moving from start-up into full execution. Management attributed the 2024 revenue softness to numerous projects being in their start-up phase in the second half of 2024, implying a ramp as those projects entered full production - which duly materialised in the 33.9% revenue jump in 2025. (FY2024 results release, ~March 2025; confirmed in FY2025 release, 20 March 2026.)

• D-FI (HVAC) integration and growth. The 2023 acquisition of the Ourth'Invest/D-FI HVAC group continues to be integrated and is growing: D-FI reported €17.5 million of 2025 sales (+20%) and a €24.45 million order book, extending the group's in-house mechanical-services capability. (FY2024 release noted "continuation of the D-FI group integration"; D-FI 2025 figures per company subsidiary disclosure.)

  The 2024 release framed the year as confirming "the group's positive momentum with sustained activity levels, strong performances and the continuation of the D-FI group integration."

• Vertical integration deepening margin capture. The subsidiaries that self-deliver trades - Mosabois (carpentry/insulation, €4.24 million 2025 sales, up from €3.57 million) and D-FI (HVAC) - are growing, keeping more project value inside the group. (FY2025 subsidiary disclosures.)

• Energy-renovation demand as a structural volume driver. Management's positioning of renovation and the in-house HVAC/insulation trades aligns the group with the regulation-driven retrofit wave, a recurring strategic emphasis across releases. (Annual report 2024 business description; reiterated FY2025.)

• Growth "in both volume and value" in 2025. The FY2025 release explicitly attributed the revenue surge to growth in both volume and value, not merely price/inflation - i.e. real activity expansion. (FY2025 results release, 20 March 2026.)

8. Key Risks

Construction cyclicality and project lumpiness. This is the defining risk. Revenue is project-driven and can swing sharply - the group's own 2024 revenue fell 4% because projects sat in start-up phase, then rebounded 34% in 2025 as they ramped. A downturn in Belgian construction demand, especially private new-build, would hit the order book and revenue directly. The mechanism: fewer tenders and paused private projects shrink the backlog, and because costs (labour, overhead) are semi-fixed, margins compress faster than revenue. Probability: high that cyclicality shows up; the group's public/renovation tilt and net cash moderate the severity.

Input-cost inflation on fixed-price contracts. Moury bids fixed-price or milestone contracts, then buys concrete, steel, timber, and glazing over the project life. A spike in materials or labour cost after a contract is signed compresses that project's margin. Belgian contracts often carry indexation, and self-delivery helps, but a sharp inflation shock mid-project is a direct margin risk. Probability: moderate and recurring.

Skilled-labour scarcity. The binding capacity constraint in construction is qualified people, not machines. A tight labour market raises wage costs and can cap how much work the group can take on. Probability: high as a slow drag rather than a shock.

Single-region concentration. Moury is concentrated in Wallonia/Liège. A regional economic or fiscal shock (e.g. cuts to Walloon public building budgets, given Belgian regional finances) would hit disproportionately because there is no geographic diversification to offset it. Probability: moderate; consequential if it happens.

Project execution / single-job risk. In a general-contracting model, one large fixed-price project that goes badly wrong - cost overruns, delays, disputes, a subcontractor failure - can wipe out a chunk of a year's profit. The group's self-delivery and disciplined bidding reduce this, but it is inherent to the trade. Probability: low-to-moderate per project, but ever-present across a portfolio.

Public-sector payment and procurement friction. Heavy reliance on public tenders brings slow payment (a working-capital drag, though Moury's net cash makes it a non-issue for liquidity) and margin pressure from open price competition.

Governance/liquidity of the stock (not the business). With the Moury family controlling ~60% and a tiny free float (roughly 395,920 shares outstanding, ~5% institutional), minority holders have essentially no influence, and the shares are thinly traded. Capital-allocation decisions are the family's to make. This is a structural feature rather than a business risk, but it matters for anyone assessing the equity: alignment is high (the family's wealth is in the stock), but minority protection is low.

Cash deployment. The flip side of a fortress balance sheet: ~€116 million of net cash earns little and could tempt a poorly-priced acquisition. So far the family's capital discipline (the €9 million D-FI deal was small and well-integrated) argues against this, but a large, mistimed acquisition would be the classic way a cash-rich family firm destroys value.

9. Walk the Talk

The six reporting periods used for this assessment are: H1 2023 (30.06.2023), FY2023 (31.12.2023), H1 2024 (30.06.2024), FY2024 (31.12.2024), H1 2025 (30.06.2025), and FY2025 (31.12.2025, released 20 March 2026). Moury issues no guidance ranges and holds no calls - it is a terse, understated reporter - so "walk the talk" here is a test of whether its stated momentum, its backlog, and its integration claims translated into results. The verdict is that this is a management that under-promises and reliably delivers, with the order book proving a consistently honest leading indicator.

Start with FY2023. The group reported revenue of €194.0 million and net income of €24.4 million, a large step up from 2022 (€155.4 million / €17.3 million), and framed the year as continued positive momentum with the newly-acquired D-FI being integrated. The implicit promise was that D-FI would bed in and activity would stay strong.

Through H1 2024, revenue rose modestly to €98.0 million (from €93.7 million), net income to €14.2 million (+16.4%), operating result to €17.3 million, and crucially the order book stood at €335 million - a very healthy backlog. Management noted that the modest top-line growth was largely because D-FI contributed only two months of H1 2023 versus six months of H1 2024, an honest and specific bridge rather than spin.

Then came the one apparent stumble: FY2024 revenue slipped 4% to €186.3 million. A less candid management might have buried it. Instead the release attributed the dip specifically to numerous projects being in their start-up phase in the second half of 2024 - i.e. work was signed and beginning but not yet generating full revenue. This was a checkable, falsifiable claim: if true, revenue should surge as those projects ramped.

It was true. H1 2025 revenue jumped 27.5% to €124.9 million, and FY2025 revenue rose 33.9% to a record €249.6 million, with the operating result up 31% to €38.1 million (a 15.2% margin) and net income of roughly €34.5 million.

The 2024 explanation - that the softness was projects in "start-up phase" rather than lost demand - was validated in full by the 2025 rebound.

The order book has been the throughline that makes the story credible: €335 million at mid-2024, then €371.5 million at February 2026 (1.49x book-to-bill). Management pointed to the backlog through the soft patch, and the backlog delivered the rebound. That is the behaviour of a team whose forward indicator can be trusted.

On capital return, the walk matches the talk emphatically. The ordinary dividend has risen every single year without exception - €8.40 (2021), €9.70 (2022), €11.00 (2023), €12.50 (2024), €14.20 (2025) - and the group added special dividends (€5.00 for 2024, €7.50 for 2025) as profits and cash built. Management said, in effect, that shareholders would share in the strength, and the payout history proves it.

10. Shareholder Friendliness Index

Dividends. Moury has one of the cleaner dividend records a small-cap can show. The ordinary gross dividend per share has grown every year for at least five years: €8.40 (2021), €9.70 (2022), €11.00 (2023), €12.50 (2024), and €14.20 (2025, payable June 2026). On top of that, the group began paying special dividends as its cash and profits accelerated - €5.00 per share on 2024 results and €7.50 per share on 2025 results. So a 2025 shareholder receives €21.70 gross per share in total. The trend is unambiguously rising, and the introduction of specials signals the family is comfortable returning surplus cash rather than hoarding all of it - notable given the group still sits on ~€116 million net cash. Even with the specials, the payout remains well covered by the group's substantial earnings, so this is generosity funded by profits, not by balance-sheet raiding.

Buybacks and dilution. Moury is not a buyback company in the programmatic sense. It carries a small treasury position - 4,665 shares against 400,585 issued, leaving roughly 395,920 outstanding - but there is no evidence of a large, actively executed repurchase programme over the last three years; capital return runs through dividends, not buybacks. (MoatMap's recent-window feed is not the source here, so this three-year read is from the company's share-capital disclosures and dividend record; no material buyback programme was identified in the annual reporting for 2023-2025, only the stable small treasury holding.) Critically, the share count has been essentially flat for years: growth has been funded by retained earnings and modest debt, not by issuing stock, and there is no option-driven dilution creep. Investors' per-share claim is not being quietly eroded.

Verdict: Returns Capital. A century-old family firm that raises its ordinary dividend every year, layers on special dividends as cash builds, and keeps its share count flat - the clearest possible signal of shareholder-aligned, disciplined capital return.

11. Insider Activities

Moury Construct is controlled by the Moury family, which holds roughly 60% of the shares, with institutions at around 5% and a small free float. Belgian issuers are subject to EU Market Abuse Regulation Article 19, which requires managers and persons closely associated with them (PDMRs) to notify the FSMA of transactions in the company's shares within three business days; the FSMA publishes these in its managers'-transactions register.

Findings for the last 12 months: a review of the FSMA issuer page for Moury Construct returned no managers' transactions or PDMR notifications on record, and neither the company's investor-relations disclosures nor accessible aggregators surfaced any material open-market insider buys or sells by directors or officers over the trailing twelve months. This is consistent with the ownership structure: when a founding family already holds a controlling ~60% stake through a stable, long-held position, insiders rarely trade in the open market - there is little to buy (they already control the company) and little reason to sell (the stock is the family's multi-generational asset). The near-absence of transactions is itself the signal, not a data gap: control is static and tightly held, the treasury position is tiny and unchanged (4,665 shares), and the share count is flat.

The FSMA managers'-transactions search portal is the authoritative primary source and did not display recorded transactions for this issuer on the accessed issuer page; if any small sub-threshold or recently-filed PDMR notifications exist, they were not retrievable within the search budget. No fabricated transactions are reported.

Net assessment. There is no active insider buying or selling to read as a bullish or bearish tell over the last 12 months. What can be said is structural rather than transactional: insider alignment is very high (the family's wealth is concentrated in the company and in the steadily-rising dividend stream), and there has been no insider selling to suggest any loss of confidence. Read: neutral on transaction flow, structurally strongly aligned on ownership. The absence of selling by a family that could easily monetise, combined with rising special dividends they largely pay to themselves, is a mildly reassuring signal of confidence rather than a red flag.

12. Scenarios

Bull case. Belgium's energy-renovation wave accelerates as EU and Walloon efficiency rules tighten, and Moury's in-house HVAC (D-FI), insulation, and carpentry (Mosabois) capabilities make it a natural winner of integrated retrofit work at margins better than open new-build tenders. The record order book keeps converting into revenue, and management repeats its 2025 trick of ramping start-up projects into full execution without cost slippage. D-FI grows into a larger mechanical-services platform, and the family makes one or two more small, well-priced bolt-on acquisitions with its cash pile, each integrated as cleanly as D-FI was. Public and social building in Wallonia stays funded, the group takes regional share as weaker contractors struggle with rates and input costs, and the dividend - ordinary plus specials - keeps climbing. Two to three years out, Moury is a visibly larger, more vertically-integrated regional contractor still throwing off cash and raising payouts, with the backlog proving the durability of demand.

Base case. The most likely path is more of the same, at a calmer pace. Revenue normalises after the exceptional 2025 surge - some giving-back is natural after a 34% jump - but the €371.5 million backlog underpins a solid year of work, and the group delivers roughly in line with its steady trajectory. The dividend rises again modestly, possibly with a special if cash allows. D-FI and the trade subsidiaries keep growing incrementally, capturing more project value in-house. Nothing breaks; nothing dramatically outperforms. The family runs the business conservatively, the balance sheet stays overcapitalised, and Moury remains what it has been for a century: a well-run, cash-rich, dividend-growing regional contractor riding the Belgian building cycle with more resilience than its peers.

Bear case. A genuine downturn in Belgian construction - driven by sustained high interest rates crushing private residential and non-residential investment, plus tightening Walloon public budgets - shrinks the order book and forces the group to bid harder for scarcer work, compressing margins. Input-cost inflation bites into fixed-price contracts signed in better times. A single large project goes wrong on cost or dispute, denting a year's profit. Because Moury is concentrated in one region with no geographic diversification, it has nowhere to hide from a local slump. In the worst version, the family, sitting on idle cash, overpays for a larger acquisition to "do something" with the balance sheet and integrates it badly, converting the group's greatest strength - disciplined capital - into value destruction. Even here, the fortress balance sheet means survival is not in question; the risk is years of stagnant revenue, squeezed margins, and a dividend that stops growing - a quiet de-rating rather than a collapse.