The basics
Company name: Marlborough Communications
What they do: Communications systems for the army
Headquarters: Horley
The boss: David Elcock and Adrian Patrick
The financials
Latest turnover (?,000): 22,063
Four-year compound sales growth (%): 45
Latest Ebitda (?,000): 3,624
The details
Marlborough Communications is big supplier of advanced communications equipment to the British Armed Forces. The business was founded in 1981 and quickly became a main supplier to the Ministry of Defence.
Today the business enjoys sales of £22m and pre-tax profits of £3.6m, compared with ?7.2m turnover and £1m gross profits in 2007.
The firm supplied gadgetry during the Falklands War in 1982 and more recently has become a major developer and supplier of technology to Nato troops in Afghanistan.
Around 80 per cent of sales still go to the British military. Recent orders include a £2.5m contract won in October to supply miniature unmanned surveillance drones to the Ministry of Defence and a deal to supply 350 modular power distributions systems or radio batteries to you and I to the US Army. The batteries are designed with weight in mind, and reduce the burden on soldiers” legs by around 30 per cent.
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