Security remains core to global strategy and continues to provide growth opportunities, says the multi-national company G4S. The company points to an increasing trend from government and commercial customers to out-source, reshape and in its words embrace innovative, cost reducing, integrated security.
That said, the company in its preliminary results for January to December 2011 said that it would take advantage of trends for integrated facilities services in suitable markets – for example the UK government sector. And in large developing markets the security contractor said that it will expand beyond security where the market opportunity is large and there is significant growth potential – for example, Brazil, India and China. Small and medium sized acquisitions a key component to deliver strategic objectives. Last year a proposed multi-billion merger between G4S and the facilities management contractor ISS was aborted. The security firm says that it has an expected acquisition spend of around £200m in 2012, with a focus there on developing markets
The company spoke also of a ‘more active divestment’ of what it termed non-core or under-performing businesses. On that subject, the company said it would make an ‘overhead review’ of its organisational set-up.
Nick Buckles, Chief Executive Officer, said the firm was encouraged by the performance and outlook for our US commercial and the UK government and commercial businesses. “However, the outlook for our developed markets cash solutions and Continental European secure solutions businesses remains muted and we continue to focus on cost base control. More generally, we won and mobilised a number of significant contracts in 2011 and expect outsourcing trends to continue. Overall, we are confident about the outlook for 2012 when we expect to deliver organic revenue growth higher than 2011 together with the additional contribution from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games contract. This confidence is underlined by the 8pc increase in our dividend.”
The company announced our seventh consecutive year of underlying revenue, PBITA and dividend growth since G4S was formed in 2004 by merger with the UK guarding firm Securicor. The firm said that business has performed well despite continued global economic uncertainty; has good trading momentum; and has delivered further strong organic growth of 9pc in developing markets (30pc of revenue and 34pc of PBITA).
