Profits at Salmon’s tech company up to €1.3m
By Ian Kehoe
Storit, the technology company owned by Mayo entrepreneur Frank Salmon, increased its profits to €1.3 million last year, despite a fall in revenues.
Storit is the holding company for CMS Peripherals, Salmon’s data storage business. It posted revenues of €82.6 million for 2009, down from €157 million in its previous accounts, which covered 16 months to the end of 2008.
Tom Burke, finance director of Storit, said that revenues had been hit by changes in the sterling/euro exchange rate, as 80 per cent of the company’s business is generated in Britain but it reports its accounts in euro.
Overall, he said the core revenues were down about 15 per cent. Despite the fall, the company increased pre-tax profits from €1.1 million for the 16month period to €1.3 million for 2009.
‘‘Our profit margins are up,” said Burke. ‘‘We have extracted more profit by focusing on value.” He said that the technology company has streamlined its operations to deal with the recession, including reducing staff numbers from 130 to 104.
‘‘2010 is obviously a difficult year, but we are doing well. We would expect to increase our revenue numbers this year,” he said.
Storit has deals with more than 50 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Philips and Samsung, and sells data storage products, servers and back-up systems directly to big businesses.
It also supplies shops in Britain and Ireland and has distribution agreements for about 3,000 different products, including MP3 players and hand-held recorders.
