Silent Witness says revenues for the first quarter ended Oct. 31 were $15.2 million, up 8 percent from last year’s first-quarter revenue of $14.1 million. The video monitoring company says the increase was due to higher sales of CCTV video storage and networking products and sales of the Digital Video Sensor system to The Stanley Works company.
Earnings for the first quarter ended Oct. 31 were $1.1 million, compared to $207,000 for the first quarter in 2001, a five-fold increase. This represented a 13-cent diluted earnings per share compared to 3 cents diluted earnings per share in the prior year’s first quarter.
Sales in its CCTV division increased $817,000 to $12.2 million due to a sales increase in video recording and networking equipment. Sales of video recording equipment totaled $4.3 million, compared to $3.5 million in the prior year’s first quarter. (The video recording and networking business was purchased from Gyyr Inc. effective Sept. 12, 2001 and the financial results for the quarter ended Oct. 31, 2001 included sales and operating costs of the related business beginning from the date of acquisition.)
Sales of product for the Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) division totaled $959,000, an increase of more than 600 percent from the comparable quarter last year mainly due to increased sales of the Digital Video Sensor system and a related product to The Stanley Works. Sales in the mobile division decreased to $2.1 million from $2.6 million, primarily due to cutbacks in school district spending on video equipment.
To accommodate the company’s growth, in October, it entered into agreements to purchase 11.9 acres of land in Surrey, British Columbia for approximately $3.1 million. (Completion of the purchases is subject to rezoning and subdivision approvals and other conditions.) Silent Witness is investigating the use of this site to construct a new facility to house its production, sales, research and development, and administrative functions currently performed at its head office in Surrey.
