Italian Security Leaders 2013, Top 25

The magazine a & s Italy, leader in technical publishing for the security sector, in collaboration with KF Economics have drawn up the second edition of the “Italian Security Leaders, Top 25” survey. The survey shows a picture of the performance of the players who dominate the Italian security market, providing particularly important indices to frame the state of health and trends that govern a sector that, even in 2012, boasted a respectable performance.

At a glance, there is a decline in revenues compared to the excellent 2011, but this is an extremely limited value and which indeed represents the stability of the sector, especially when looking at margins. In short, even in the austerity of 2012, the companies that produce, distribute and install security technologies in many cases have had the ability to safeguard profitability. The principle that “being generalists doesn’t always pay off” was confirmed: both producers operating in multiple segments and companies with a mixed production and distribution model lose turnover and have modest profitability. On the contrary, companies focused on specific operating segments seem to bring home better results.

The distributors sector, which had recorded very sustained growth in 2011 (over 50%), slowed growth (+ 2%) while maintaining normal gross profitability (EBITDA / V around 5%);
system integrators confirm a higher profitability than distributors (around 7% as in 2011), but growth has stopped (-3% compared to 8% in 2011);
producers show a higher average profitability than distributors and integrators (we are talking about 11%, higher than 8% in 2011), but also in this case the double-digit growth in turnover recorded in 2011 has stopped (-1 %); among the manufacturing companies belonging to the sample analyzed, the segment that is most profitable is that of Anti-intrusion, accompanied by Fire Protection and Access Control. This data, partly the result of the peculiarity of the sample analyzed (which does not include multinationals, mainly dedicated to video surveillance technologies), can also be assessed in terms of the historicity of the anti-intrusion companies and greater customer loyalty; video surveillance, which had shown great growth in 2011 (over 30%), suffered a notable stop (-11%), however offset by a slight improvement in modest profitability (from about 4% to 5%). This data can also be analyzed in relation to the constant increase in the offer, which also includes operators from other sectors (IT, surveillance) and the simultaneous reduction in the costs of the units sold, especially for new generation technologies (IP video); access control, which had a high profitability (10%) but did not grow, in 2012 instead grew (+ 10%) but at the same time lost a lot of profitability (3% in 2012).

The financial solidity of the companies collected in the sample confirms that also in 2012 the security sector was able to express average values ​​of absolute excellence compared to the manufacturing industry average. From this point of view, producers are the segment that generates the most value, compared to distributors and system integrators, while producers / distributors have a considerable solidity / rating but a lower average financial value index.

Download the full report here: TOP 25_AS_24_13