G4S shares sink despite signs of improvement

Kean Marden, analyst at Jefferies, said: "Although not explicitly disclosed by the company, we calculate a circa 3.5pc organic revenue growth rate in the second quarter, which is a sharp deceleration on 8.9pc in the first, and well below our 7pc estimate, primarily due to emerging markets". The FTSE 100 security group, however, chose to keep its dividend unchanged. The group's shares have added more than 60 percent to their value over the past year, and are up by just under 34 percent in the year-to-date.

Security firm G4S PLC on Wednesday said it chose to keep its interim dividend flat as it reported a rise in pretax profit in the first half of 2017 on the back on higher revenue, which grew across all geographies except for the Middle East and India. The company further delivered earnings of £128 million, up 7.6 percent year-on-year.

The Board has declared an interim dividend of 3.59 pence per share in line with the prior period.

"Our well established productivity programme provides increased confidence in the group's ability to deliver recurring operating and financing efficiencies of GBP90 million to GBP100 million by 2020".

For the past four years, G4S, which provides services such as guarding, aviation screening and mobile patrols, has been selling businesses to pay off debt and trying to limit losses from British government contracts, gradually getting a greater share of its revenue from overseas.