The multi-national security contractor G4S has hailed robust demand for its services, particularly in North America, Latin America and Asia Middle East – but revenues fell in UK and Ireland.
While Europe returned to growth, seeing a rise in revenue of 2pc, UK and Ireland saw a fall of 3.2pc in revenue, according to the firm’s half-yearly results for the first six months of 2015. The company pointed to the UK electronic monitoring contract which ended in the first quarter of 2014; and the loss of a large retail contract. To recap, that Government contract was cut short after revelations that G4S and fellow contractor Serco over-charged for its service. UK and Ireland revenue in 2015 was £760m in 2015 compared with £785m in 2014.
G4S Chief Executive Officer Ashley Almanza said: “We continue to make good progress with our strategic plans, investing in growth and productivity programmes which underpinned strong growth in our pipeline and a 10.5 per cent increase in underlying earnings. We won new contracts with a total value of £1.4 billion and sales, new contract mobilisation and on-going productivity programmes provided increasingly good momentum through the first half. This is expected to deliver further improvements in the group’s performance in the second half.”
The company points to since January, winning new work with an annual contract value of over £680m (compared with £600m in 2014), and a total contract value of £1.4 billion (compared with £1.2 billion in 2014). UK contracts won during 2015 include facilities management (FM) for utilities, healthcare and police sectors, security for Hinkley Point C (£80m, ten year contract) and care and justice services for local authorities and custodial services for police forces including East Anglia, Devon and Cornwall, Northamptonshire and Cumbria.
Since June 2013, the firm says that it has strengthened its global leadership team with 135 senior appointments of which 60 were internal promotions and 75 external hires. “We are pursuing a concerted, group-wide safety programme against a backdrop of increased levels of serious road traffic incidents and attacks on employees.”
On the Continent, G4S says that business in Greece responded well to the country’s ‘economic pressures’ and played a key role in ensuring cash was available across the country.
