G4S shares hit despite strong profits

L Markets are unnerved by emerging market flat revenues

with our ongoing investment in sales operations and new products and services, provides stronger support for our organic growth plans.

“During the second half of 2017, our growth programme will focus on consolidating contract wins made over the past year and on converting attractive opportunities in our pipeline.”

In the UK and Ireland, revenue grew a shade under 2 per cent as G4S was boosted by new electronic monitoring, facilities management and integrated security contracts.

A key part of Almanza’s strategy has been a mass selloff of under-performingassets,with 20 being offloaded since 2013. Analysts believe dozens more of these operations deemed surplus to requirements will go over the next few years.

This has also brought down group debt. G4S, which provides services such as guarding, aviation screening and mobile patrols, said net debt to earnings had now come down to 2.7 times, and that it was targeting 2.5 by the end of this year.

Even with yesterday’s setback to the shares, the stock has jumped 40 per cent in the year to date and has been promoted back to the FTSE 100. Investors were also pleased yesterday to see the interim dividend held at 3.59p.