is eyeing more takeovers in the months and years ahead as the Canadian engineering giant pursues its relentless growth in a quest to play a defining role in shaping global infrastructure and devising solutions to the climate change crisis.
“I always want to be in a place where we can be opportunistic,” Mr. L’Heureux said in an interview with The Globe and Mail. “We need to maintain a very agile capital structure to continue to consolidate the market.” The rise of WSP has been swift. Barely a decade ago, the Montreal-based engineering giant was known as Genivar, and although it had grown through consolidation it was, by world standards, a mid-sized consultancy.
If engineers were once seen as the people you hired to make something work properly, they’re now much more than that, Mr. L’Heureux said. He said he wants his staff to think of themselves as change agents, as the designers of sustainable infrastructure that has to stand the test of time in the face of rapidly-changing global climate patterns and the creators of novel solutions for problems both apparent and anticipated.
“What these transactions clearly suggest to us, is that the prevailing market uncertainty is creating opportunities for this well-run and well-capitalized company to further build shareholder value,” Raymond James analyst Frederic Bastien said in an Aug. 3 research note. “[They’re] not letting a good crisis go to waste.”