The multi-national security company Securitas has hailed 2016 as a record year. With organic sales growth of 7 percent the company grew faster than the security market, improved the operating margin and earnings per share grew 9 percent adjusted for changes in exchanges rates, said Alf Göransson, President and Chief Executive Officer, pictured.
He said: “Market dynamics in the US remain favorable and we are confident that our acquisition of Diebold’s Electronic Security business will allow us to further advance our market position in the US security market. During the past year the European market has been characterized by increased social tension and higher levels of security needs. These extra needs have proven to be short-term and volatile in nature and are expected to continue to reduce in the coming quarters. While this, in combination with a few large contract terminations and historically high comparatives, will reverse the positive organic sales growth trend in Security Services Europe in the coming quarters, we expect it to recover during the second half of 2017.”
For the full year report visit the company’s website.
Göransson spoke also of the company’s strategy, Vision 2020, which includes digitising customers’ historical and real-time data, ‘to gradually produce more predictive security’.
Europe arm
The Security Services Europe arm of the security contractor provides services in 26 countries, and airport security
in 15; it has some 117,000 employees (slightly more than the 112,000 in North America). It saw a rise in demand in late 2015 and the first half of 2016, due to terrorism and refugees from the Near East; however the Europe division saw a gradual reduction in that demand during the last quarter of 2016, and the firm says Europe will likely not return to security market growth rate until the second half of 2017. Europe saw a slight rise in its operating margin compared with the year before, from 5.7 to 5.8 percent. In 2016 the client retention rate fell to 90 percent from 91pc the year before; and the rate of staff turnover stayed the same, at 28pc.
Göransson said: “We are also delivering on our strategy. Security solutions and electronic security grew 56 percent (38) including acquisitions and 22 percent (35) organically, representing BSEK 14.1 (9.3) or 16.0 percent (11.5) of total sales in 2016. We believe that we can continue to increase our sales of security solutions and electronic security at a high pace also in the coming years and make this a substantial part of the Group’s total sales.”
