CORRECT: Wilson Parking profit doubles

CORRECT: Wilson Parking profit doubles as security, parking revenue climbs

(Fixes regulator approval details in 8th graph)

By Sophie Boot

Nov. 23 (BusinessDesk) - Wilson Parking New Zealand, owned by Hong Kong’s Kwok family, more than doubled annual profit as it reaped more revenue from an expanding security business.

Net profit rose to $6 million in year ended June 30, from $2.7 million a year earlier, Auckland-based Wilson's annual report shows. Revenue jumped 62 percent to $130.5 million, driven by sales from its recently acquired security business.

While parking revenue rose 8.4 percent to $89.3 million and remains its biggest business, revenue from security guard and patrol services more than quadrupled to $56.3 million, driven by the March 2014 acquisition of First Security Guard Services for $29.6 million

In June this year, the country's biggest public parking provider acquired two unnamed security companies for $650,000. They contributed pretax profit of $10,244 on revenue of $119,724 to the full-year result and Wilson estimated they would have contributed profit of $349,207 on revenue of $1.4 million had they been acquired at the start of the year.

Wilson has "invested significantly" in the New Zealand security business over the past 18 months and will continue to do so, it said in an emailed statement.

"We’ll continue to expand our local delivery model by targeting high-value strategic acquisitions in the medium term, with the support of our Australian security operation," it said.

The company said high-level security, including CCTV cameras and regular security patrols, was an "essential aspect of our parking services", and its recently purchased Tournament Parking sites now had the benefit of those security services.

In November this year, Wilson was cleared by the Commerce Commission to buy five of 13 parking sites owned by rival Tournament Parking in Auckland and Wellington. In its annual report, Wilson said it paid $12.3 million for shares in a car park property and a further security business after June 30.

That added to an acquisition in 2013, when Wilson bought 63 of Tournament's car parking licences across the country, sparking the regulator to investigate whether the deal would stifle competition before clearing the acquisition.

Wilson said it "continually looks at a wide range of opportunities and assesses them on a case by case basis."

(BusinessDesk)

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