INVESTMENT

Globalsecuritygiantg4stook a further step towards shaking off its troubled history yesterday, with a robust interim trading performance that further suggested its recovery strategy remains on track.

G4S chief executive Ashley Almanza, who has masterminded the group’s return to health and taken it out of the glare of previous adverse publicity, reported a near-17 per cent jump in pre-tax profits to £237 million in the first six months of 2017. Revenues rose 12 per cent to £3.97 billion.

The group also has a sales pipeline with an annual contract value of £7bn.

It was not unmitigatedly good news, however, as the market marked the shares down 7.5 per cent on the news that while G4S’S developed markets saw business growth of 10 per cent emerging markets were flat due to a near-8 per cent fall in business in the Middle East and India.

One analyst said: “There may have also been some profit-taking as the shares are at a ten-year high. It remains a strong narrative.”

Almanza said: “We contin-

0 A security guard works at the perimeter of the Olympic Park site in 2012

ASHLEY ALMANZA, G4S ue to invest in strengthening our sales operations and in new products and services for our customers and these investments have materially improved our sales pipeline which supports our medium term aim of growing revenues by an average of around 4-6 per cent per annum.

“Our well established productivity programme provides increased confidence in the group’s ability to deliver recurring operating and financing efficiencies of £90m to £100m by 2020.”

The G4S boss has been overseeing an overhaul following a series of historical blunders at the company, including a prisoner-tagging scandal and failure to supply adequate security for the London Olympics in 2012.

He said: “We continued to make substantial progress with G4S’S transformation and this provides increased confidence in the group’s prospects.

“The scale and quality of our pipeline is materially improved and this, together

“We continue to invest in strengthening our sales operations and in new products and services for our customers.”