Margins and profitability in investigation and private security activities

Investigation and private security activitiesNACE 80.010

45 Norwegian companies in this industry. The median company kept 5.6 % of every krone.

13 % of the companies in this industry posted a negative operating result that year.

The distribution

What companies in the industry earned

One tenth of companies fell below -1.9 %, and one tenth above 14.9 %. That is the real spread in the industry, not an average.

Top against weakest third

Top third
10.9 %
Weakest third
0.8 %
Spread
10 percentage points
Equity ratio
22.7 %median of 45

Size

Profitability by size

Profitability by size
RevenueCompaniesMedian operating margin
1 to 5 m116.6 %
5 to 20 m155.3 %
20 to 100 m126.6 %

Companies are split into revenue bands, with the median margin in each. Bands with fewer than ten companies are omitted, because the median becomes too unstable to show.

Public contracts

Who in the industry wins public contracts

18 of 45 companies in the industry have won at least one public contract since 2022, that is 40.0 %.

Those that win have median revenue of 24.3 m kr, against 8.8 m kr for those that do not. That is 2.8× as much. Note that this describes who wins, not evidence that contracts make companies large; large companies also find it easier to bid.

The 38 contracts we find come most often from these buyers.

  • Bane NOR Eiendom AS4
  • Sarpsborg kommune3
  • Tromsø kommune3
  • OsloMet - storbyuniversitetet3
  • Utlendingsnemnda3

Contracts come from Doffin and TED. Our collection is not complete, and TED covers only contracts above the EEA threshold, so the figures are a floor and not a full count. We say what we find, not what exists.

Questions and answers

Common questions about investigation and private security activities

What is a normal operating margin in investigation and private security activities?
The median company kept 5.6 % of every krone. That means half of the 45 companies in the sample were above it, and half below.
What separates the best from the weakest in investigation and private security activities?
The top third kept 10.9 % of every krone, against 0.8 % for the weakest third. The spread is 10 percentage points, and that is within the same industry, the same country and the same year.
How many companies are there in investigation and private security activities in Norway?
We hold filed accounts for 45 Norwegian companies on this industry code with at least one million kroner in revenue. The real number is higher, since dormant and very small companies are excluded.
How many are loss-making in investigation and private security activities?
13 % of the companies in the sample posted a negative operating result.
How large is a typical company in investigation and private security activities?
Median revenue is 15.5 m kr. Half of the companies fall between 5.5 m kr and 49 m kr.
How much do public contracts matter in investigation and private security activities?
18 of 45 companies, that is 40.0 %, have won at least one public contract since 2022. They have median revenue of 24.3 m kr, against 8.8 m kr for the rest.

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Related industries

Other industries in the same group

Method. 45 companies registered on industry code 80.010 (Investigation and private security activities) with filed accounts and at least one million kroner in revenue. The figures come from the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises and are public. Operating margin is operating profit divided by operating revenue.

Each company appears with the most recent accounts we hold for it. For the great majority that is the 2024 filing. Around eight per cent had already filed for 2025 when we collected, and for those the 2025 figures apply. We therefore write "latest accounts" rather than naming a single year.

We show one cross-section and no trend line. Our database has broad coverage for the most recent accounting year, but only a small and non-random sample for earlier years. A curve over time would therefore measure who we happened to collect, not what happened in the industry.

Companies with under one million in revenue are excluded, because dormant limited companies would otherwise pull the median down. We do not publish an industry page until we hold at least 30 companies.

This is a description of an industry, not a ranking of companies. We name no individual company here.

Ohmsyn is built by Erik Harry Høydal.