Pretax profits at Dublin-based technology firm Corvil more than doubled last year to €2.4 million, new figures show.

According to accounts just filed by Corvil Ltd, the increase came on a 35 per cent rise in sales to €17.4 million in 2011.

But the company expressed concern about its ability to grow sales and margins with the ongoing economic and regulatory squeeze on banks, its main customers. Alongside continuing uncertainty about the euro zone, this has led to a tightening of budgets across the sector, the directors said in their report.

They state that last year’s outcome was driven by “greater penetration within the existing customer base, as well as the addition of new customers and the expansion of operations in Asia”. The report states that “the focus on application monitoring within the core technology facilitated this growth”

Last year, the firm opened an office in Singapore, helping to increase employee numbers to 57 from 44 a year earlier.

Corvil’s products are used by the world’s leading banks, exchanges, electronic market makers and service providers. Customers include Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Thomson Reuters, the New York and London Stock Exchange. The principal activity of the firm is the provision of latency monitoring and management solutions for high frequency trading networks.In the world of modern trading, latency has emerged as a key factor in determining the level of success a particular automated trading or market making strategy achieves.

This has resulted in an unprecedented level of investment into latency technologies and infrastructure by the world’s leading exchanges, banks, electronic market makers and service providers to financial markets.

Corvil is led by chief executive Donal Byrne, who said competition in its space was becoming more intense.

“While Corvil continue to have a competitive edge, it is possible that a new entrant or incumbent player could introduce technology with comparable or better performance and/or functionality that has greater selling power.”