Member Article

Rising pretax profits breed confidence for Gateshead security firm Petards

Gateshead-based Petards Group, a developer of advanced security and surveillance systems, is confident of success in 2016 as it revealed an increase in profitability for the year.

The company announced a £142k jump in pretax profit, rising from £620k to £762k, whilst its operating profit jumped to £935,000, an increase of 22%.

However, revealing its audited results for the year ended 31 December 2015, the firm reported a £400k drop in revenues, with the figure dropping down from £13.5m to £13.1m.

Similarly Petards’ closing order book dropped from 2014, with orders suffering a 25% decline from £20m to £16m. Despite this, outlook remains positive for the firm as its current order book contains £11m worth of work scheduled for delivery this year already.

Raschid Abdullah, Chairman of Petards, explained: “Our strong opening order book together with recently received orders provides £11 million of revenues that are presently scheduled for delivery in 2016.”

Petards’ order book is filled with the likes of Siemens Mobility, Bombardier Transportation and Hitachi Rail Europe.

Raschid added: “With new projects still under discussion, the board is confident that the group is well positioned to achieve another good year’s performance in 2016.”