ITALY. Luggage protection and tracing services company Safe Bag has reported a +9% year-on-year increase in consolidated turnover for the first nine months of 2017.
Turnover reached €21 million, while EBITDA was up +25% to €3.5 million.
Safe Bag said the growth was largely driven by a strong performance in Italy, France, Portugal and Switzerland. This was strengthened by sales at the Canadian airports of Montréal, Vancouver and Ottawa, where Safe Bag has new contracts.
The company also noted the impact of Hurricane Irma in September which forced the closure of Miami Airport. This resulted in a “considerable loss” in EBITDA of €0.2 million, Safe Bag said. If this event had not taken place EBITDA would have been more than €3.7 million with a growth of +32% compared with 2016.
The results for the first nine months do not include the franchises of Warsaw (Poland), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Rome (Italy, with an additional six points of sale) where commercial activities were launched during the second fortnight of September 2017.
The company said it considered the figures to be in line with those expected for the end of the year, which it communicated on 6 June.
Safe Bag’s board of directors also voted to call a shareholders’ meeting to request authorisation to purchase and dispose of treasury shares.
“The growth in these results of Safe Bag is solid and constant so much so that the results illustrated today do not show the recent acquisitions that will bring fruits starting from 2018,” said Safe Bag CEO Alessandro Notari. “We confirm the release, within the first six months of 2018, of a new industrial plan with estimated increases for the period 2018/2020.”
Chairman Rudolph Gentile noted: “Commercial development activities are undergoing an important acceleration thanks to the interest of airports in various parts of the world. A dominant position is being [achieved] in terms of brand recognition, value proposition and operating technology as well as transparency and compliance procedures appreciated in the aviation industry.
“Therefore we are ready to abandon the ‘wild fire’ growth philosophy and to open a new season of development responding to the requests of airports in other continents: our wish is to considerably accelerate the growth path.”
