Satellite technology company trebles profits after record-breaking year

0 CFO Adrian Smith: ‘We now need to prepare for scale’ Satellite mapping technology company Ecometrica is forecasting further growth after its profits tripled in a recordbreaking year.

The Edinburgh-headquartered firm saw profits leap to £650,000, a 198 per cent rise year-on-year and an almost 15-fold increase compared with two years ago. Turnover also jumped, rising by 109 per cent to £5.5 million in the year to the end of March.

Ecometrica provides sustainability reporting services to help corporations, governments and organisations understand their environmental impact. Its satellite mapping technology is being used to protect 300 million hectares of tropical forests as part of the UK Space Agency’s Forests 2020 project.

Executive chairman Richard Tipper said: “Ecometrica has laid the foundations for profitable growth into the foreseeable future. Our longterm plan is to grow through continued expansion into new segments and territories, and by broadening our technology and service models to cover new aspects of environmental risks and impact.” Chief financial officer Adrian Smith said the business could scale up its profits considerably with the right investment.

Smith said: “This was a year of hypergrowth, but it highlights our need for strategic investment at an institutional level. We have grown revenue per FTE [full-time employee] to £138,000 and, with profits having trebled, it shows our profit capability. But now we need to prepare for scale.

“There is nothing other than our capital base stopping Ecometrica from becoming the de-facto earth observation and sustainability software provider to governments and corporates alike.”

The firm currently has offices in the UK, the US, Canada and Mexico, and intends to expand into South America.