As is its way, Halma revealed an acquisition on the day of its full-year results this month. The latest company to be gobbled up by this highly takeover-friendly FTSE 100 company — known for making smoke detectors — was Ampac Group, a supplier of fire and evacuation systems in Australia and New Zealand.
Again in keeping with its tradition, Halma’s fourth deal in 12 months was relatively inexpensive at £74 million and will be slotted swiftly into one of its four divisions, in this case infrastructure safety. And, needless to say, in the accompanying set of annual performance figures, revenues, profits and the dividend were all healthily on the up — and the shares rose.
Halma dates back to 1894, when the Nahalma Tea Estate