Record revenues see profits climb at Getech
PRE-TAX profits have soared by 80% at oil business Getech.
The Leeds-based firm, which specialises in the provision of exploration data and geological exploration studies to oil companies, today reported pre-tax profit of £2.2m on record revenue of £8m – a 24% increase from last year. The group said both revenue and profits were “significantly ahead of expectations” for the second year running, as it reported “very strong growth” in its performance.
In its final results for the year ended July 31 2013, Getech said the main reason for the strong results was the growth in its multi-year Globe framework, where income grew by 71% year-on-year. This was well supported by continued growth in data sales from the record level it achieved in 2011/12, the group said.
The business, which was a spin out from the University of Leeds, said now, in order to grow the business, it is looking for ways to expand into new areas and is particularly focused on new business streams which build on its key strengths in accessing and marketing data and integrating the data with a broad multidisciplinary geoscience capability to provide real value to clients.
Non-executive chairman, Dr Stuart Paton, said: “With our continuing strong cash position and proven ability to develop the business, we continue to actively look for acquisition opportunities, particularly targeting those which will grow our core areas of expertise. The increase in the market capitalisation of the group has also increased the range of acquisition targets.”
Chief executive, Raymond Wolfson, added: “The exploration market in the oil and gas sector continued to be strong throughout the year.This has been well supported by the continuing firm oil price.
“We believe that the relative stability of the oil price at historically high levels will continue to provide a sound market environment for exploration giving a very positive outlook for our business.”
Getech announced a number of major successes during the year including its strategic Globe framework which the firm has doubled the number of core sponsors for, from five to ten. The group said demand for its gravity and magnetic data continued to be “very strong” and it completed a number of major licence deals for its global gravity and magnetic datasets.
The business’s Cryosat project, which it had previously announced as a multi-client funded pilot study, was also converted to a full global study with commitments from three clients.
