Chubb zooms in on closed circuit TV market

Chubb Security, the electronic surveillance to locks group, yesterday unveiled plans to expand its operations in the highly lucrative closed circuit television monitoring market as it announced an 8 per cent rise in annual pre-tax profits to pounds 97.1m.

The company's CCTV expansion plans in Europe, North America, and Africa, through a new subsidiary, Chubb Vision, follow the recent setting up of security operations in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and China.

Chubb recently bought MSS Security in Australia for pounds 21m and said yesterday that it intended to continue its expansion.

"[The company] has entered the next stage of expansion to build its business through acquisitions, partnerships and further organic growth," Chubb said. "These, with other actions being taken, should ensure that the results for 1996/97 will be good."

Chubb's profits rise in the year ending March 1996, on a total turnover of pounds 765.3m, came despite a drop of almost pounds 6m in its locks business in the UK, which the company blamed on continuing low levels of activity in the construction industry. However, Chubb's electronic security and fire protection business grew by pounds 9m.

Overall, the UK contributed pounds 40.6m towards the company's world-wide operating profits of pounds 91.6m, after re-organisation and redundancy costs of pounds 5.5m.

In the Australasian market, profits remained static at pounds 19.1m, although turnover expanded by 11.6 per cent, including exchange rate fluctuations, to pounds 175.6m. Elsewhere in Europe, operating profits also fell slightly to pounds 5.1m.

The final dividend is being lifted from 5p to 5.8p.