Reuters: Small talk: Gas Turbine swings to profit, sees strong growth
- Victoria Bryan
Britain's Gas Turbine Efficiency said on Monday it had swung to a small profit in 2008 and its "recession-resilient" business would deliver strong growth this year.
CEO Steve Zwolinksi told Reuters he expected double-digit percentage growth in 2009 orders after the company reported a near doubling of revenue in 2008.
The company, whose core product is a cleaning service for gas turbines in the aviation and power industries, said its order backlog stood at $26.7 million as of March 31, up 53 percent on the same time last year.
Shares in the AIM-listed company, which have already gained 48 percent so far this year after a series of positive trading updates, were up 6 percent at 0823 GMT at 27 pence, having earlier been up 7 percent.
Zwolinski said Gas Turbine could weather the recession as its products helped customers such as General Electric, Pratt & Whitney and Siemens to save money and improve efficiency.
"We haven't seen much of a slowdown at all in the areas we play in," he said in a telephone interview.
"We bring efficiency in a pretty tough economic time to assets that have to keep running because they're part of the global infrastructure of electricity, lighting, power. We're about as recession-resilient as you can get."
Gas Turbine swung to a pretax profit in 2008 of $0.9 million after a loss of $2.89 million in 2007, as revenues almost doubled to $35.1 million, and order intake jumped to $46.7 million.
"It's the beginning of the growth curve, and they have the team to deliver it," said Steven Fawkes at Matrix Corporate Capital. "Even at low fuel prices, airlines and power generation companies still want to save money," he added.
Zwolinski said Gas Turbine did not intend to start paying dividends, at least in the short-term, as it would be investing money back into the business, particularly in research and development, which takes up about 10 percent of turnover.
Zwolinksi, who joined Gas Turbine from GE, said the company was interested in expanding its operations in the Russian market and was working on getting more approvals there.
"It's an important energy market for the world and especially for Europe, and anywhere there's an energy market, chances are we have a lot of value to offer," he said.
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