Mumbai: Security & Intelligence Services India Ltd., the nation’s only listed provider of security services, aims to treble sales in the next five years by increasing its share in the fast-growing local market.
“We aim to hit $3 billion in annual revenues in the next five years as India is a big market and also growing at a faster pace,” Rituraj Sinha, managing director of SIS India, said in a phone interview last week. “Our pie will expand in the already increasing securities business in the country.”
Factors including rising urbanization, increasing demand for protection from crime and terrorism, as well as a jump in completed new buildings, are boosting demand for private security services in India. Security firms’ sales in Asia’s third-largest economy are estimated to reach a combined 1.5 trillion rupees ($21 billion) by 2022 from 570 billion rupees in 2016, according to a report published by BDO India LLP in August 2018.
Within five years, SIS India aims to capture a “double-digit” share of India’s market for security and management services — including the use of drones to inspect and map customer sites — as it wins over clients ranging from energy firms to owners of shopping malls, warehouses and residential buildings, Sinha said. He predicts registered security businesses’ sales will increase to 65% of the market from about 40% as they elbow out other operators.
Seven of the eight analysts tracked by Bloomberg have a buy or an equivalent rating on SIS India shares. Still, the stock trades below the company’s initial public offering of 809.55 rupees two years ago and has slumped 41% from a peak in May 2018.
The company’s debt is a concern, said Kotak Institutional Equities’ Garima Mishra, the only analyst with a reduce call on SIS India shares. “We await an improvement in debt profile and cash generation metrics of the company in order to turn constructive,” she wrote in an investor note last month.
SIS India’s total net debt rose 64% to 6.9 billion rupees as of June 30 from March 31, according to the company’s latest investor presentation, with a net debt to Ebitda ratio of 1.4. Group revenue from April to June rose 25% from a year earlier to 20.1 billion rupees.
SIS India had sales of 86.2 billion rupees in the year through March 2019, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company only gives five-year outlooks and in 2015 forecast it would reach revenue of $1 billion revenue in the 12 months through March 2020. It has yet to give targets for 2025. – Bloomberg
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