G4S, the BSE quoted and leading security company in the country, issued warning bells to the market about its intention to keep strong focus on the retail sector and entering the fleet management segment in a bid to bolster its markets share under an increasingly competitive environment.
The sole Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE) listed security company’s ambitious plan is part of the suit of new products that were unveiled on Thursday and which are geared to shore-up the shareholder value in the midst of increasing competition and challenging economic times.
Among its top priorities is to revamp its retail customer products on the alarm and response side by doing away with the installation fee.
“We want to remove the upfront capital which has been the norm,” Acting Managing Director of G4S Botswana, Molefe Matlhape, said.
He said by doing away with the upfront capital is expected to reduce chances of substandard equipment entering the market thereby whittling down the burden of false alarm.
The phasing out of alarms, which is dubbed SECUPAK, will come in three phases and will entail the would be customers having to sign up for a three year contract.
The product will be divided into Secure 90ÔÇöwhich is the alarm monitoring and Secure 180, which will, in addition, include one of the following : cell alert, cellphone panic system or fire alarm.
The third version will be the Full Moon that will include the Master Key Solution.
“We have being faced with a mushrooming of new entrants on the system and manned security side. These can be understood because getting in the market on these two areas (guarding and alarm) is easy. All what you need is just to register a company,” he said, adding that on the system side most of the competitors are briefcase operators with less overheads,” Matlhape said during the announcement of the company half year’s results recently.
At the moment, G4S has a market share of about 10 percent in the manned security system with 60 percent attributed to security systems (alarms) while it takes 85 percent of the cash business that that covers the replenishment of ATMs.
Further, the company launched the use of motorbikes in its alarm response operations, which is aimed at improving on its response time as it will be much easier to deal with traffic congestion, especially in urban centers.
Further, G4S is expected to launch some new products into the markets aimed at repositioning itself against competitors.
Some of the moves will involve the rolling-out of the armoured vehicles into the market to tighten its grip on its cash in transit business and the introduction of fleet tracking services that is aimed at consolidating its position in the security industry.
The company is bullish that it will keep up with its performance at the six-months to June 30, 2010 results which saw revenue shooting up by 10.6 percent to P 73 million against the 18.2 percent like-on-like in the previous period. Profit before tax was 17.2 percent better at P 15.6 million as management cheered on the sides.
