Adelaide technology company Codan has upgraded its profit guidance for the half

Codan thought it was going to have a good half. It’s now upgraded what was already going to be an “excellent’ start to the year.

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Codan shares rocketed higher today after the Adelaide company upgraded its half-year profit guidance.

While already telling the recent annual meeting that the current financial year was off to an “excellent” start, the company doubled down yesterday with an upgraded profit guidance of $30 million after tax for the six months to the end of December.

This compares with a profit of $22.2 million for the same period last year, which was itself up 40 per cent.

“At the AGM held in October ... we stated that the company had made an excellent start t the first four months of the year,’’ the company, headed by Donald McGurk, said.

Donald McGurk, the managing director of Codan.

“These business conditions have continued into November and December, with metal detection and communications sales exceeding our expectations. Large projects like the tactical communications project in Kenya may not be repeated in the second half, and, given the strength of our metal detector sales in the first half, it is too early to determine if our traditional second-half weighting of sales will occur this year.’’

Codan shares added 8 per cent by 2pm to be trading at $7.34 hitting a record high of $7.56 earlier in the day. The company is now valued at more than $1.2 billion.