Revenues grow 50% at acquisitive PTSG

After 10 years and 21 acquisitions, PTSG is still a great Yorkshire brand, says chief executive Paul Teasdale.

Today the Castleford-based company has reported revenue growth of 52% to £39.2m for the year to December 2016.

Pre-tax profits for the year rose to £7.5m for the year, up from £5.0m the year before and during 2016 it successfully integrated two new businesses, Dry Risers UK and Nimbus Lighting, as it looks to continue growing through acquisition, as well as organic growth.

Teasdale told TheBusinessDesk.com: “We take the honest Yorkshire approach when we buy businesses – we work hard on any deal we have, and are very open and upfront about what we see and what we don’t see. We don’t go into a deal with skeletons in closet. We get everything out on the table and get on with it.

“The marrying of the cultures is the greatest skill when acquiring. We’ve done that 21 times, and been successful in all occasions. Some have been harder than others, but it’s hard work, planning and preparation that helps.”

An experienced facilities management team founded the company mid-recession in 2007, and since then it has gone from strength to strength.

“The businesses we built to start with were maintenance and compliance-related,” said Teasdale. “Even in teeth of recession, 2007-9, we felt businesses were resilient to that and this was proved through the test of time, it’s compliance and it’s required – it’s recession-proof really from there on in.”

“We felt there was a gap in the market and a space where we could build the business in a space no one had done it before. What we do is too specialist, to high risk, small in invoice value people for bigger companies to do, and that is how we determined what we did.”

Nothing much phases this stoic chief executive, even on Brexit, which hit the stock markets hard in 2016, he said: “I think like anyone it was a bit of a shock on the day, we lost £15m off the company value on the same day when all stocks were marked down.

“From trade and market point of view, see it as very buoyant, we’re sensitive to the wider economy, and in terms of what we see dont see any issues.”

PTSG seems recession as well as Brexit-proof, having grown from scratch to 450, platform and present in more than 16 locations, as well as being made a publically-listed company, working with around 15,000 clients and across more than 150,000 buildings.

The board has recommended a final dividend of 0.7p per share, together with the interim dividend paid of 0.7p is a 40% increase on the dividends paid in respect of 2015.

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