Altech sees H1 earnings up to 25% lower as East, West African ops still weigh.

By bne IntelliNews September 21, 2012
South African telecommunications group Allied Technologies Limited (Altech), which swung into a loss in its fiscal year to end-February due to poor performance from East and West African operations, said its H1 results will be affected by continued poor results from those operations. The group forecast its H1 headline earnings and adjusted headline earnings per share to be between 18% and 25% lower y/y. Headline earnings exclude certain one-off items and are the major gauge for profitability in South Africa. Altech said its other operations performed satisfactorily. In addition, due to the impairments in respect of Altechs East and West African operations, reflecting their poor results, the companys basic earnings per share are expected to show a loss of between 303 cents and 310 cents, compared to a profit of 141 cents in the previous comparable financial period, Altech said in a statement. It expects to release its results for the six month period to end-August 2012 on or about September 26, 2012. In April, Altech said it would sell its West African card voucher business and was seeking equity partners to inject money in its struggling East African data centre and fibre-optic cable businesses. The Nigerian-based cellphone recharge vouchers company was negatively affected by mobile operators offering cheaper alternatives. Altech targets to double its annual revenue to ZAR 20bn (EUR 1.9bn) in the next five years, with 35% of the extra ZAR 10bn expected to come from existing businesses and the rest will come via acquisitions and expansion into new business areas.

Related Articles

South Africas Exxaro mulls firing striking coal miners.

South African company Exxaro Resources said one of the options it currently considers is dismissing striking coal mine workers who fail to return to work in the week of March 25, fin24 reported ... more

South Africas Telkom says there is no decision to lay off 13,000 employees.

South Africas telecommunication operator Telkom said that it has not made a decision on retrenching 13,000 employees, or more than half of its staff, TechCentral reported quoting a company ... more

BP, Masana Petroleum Solutions sell LPG business in South Africa.

Oryx Energies, a major independent provider of oil and gas products and services in Africa, has agreed to buy the South African liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) distribution businesses of BP and ... more

Dismiss