Remgro, a listed investment holding company based in Stellenbosch, on Wednesday reported a healthy rise in headline earnings per share for the year ended June 2017.<\/p>\n
The company said investment in its banking and insurance platforms delivered a commendable performance, while the CIV group\u00a0contributed R110 million to headline earnings (2016: R64 million).<\/p>\n
Remgro owns 51% of the CIV group, which includes Dark Fibre Africa. For the period ended March 2017, DFA’s revenue improved 37.2% to R1.63 billion, while EBITDA was up 24.4% to R1.07 billion.<\/p>\n
At 31 March 2017 a total distance of 9,854km of fibre network was completed in major metropolitan areas and on long-haul routes, Remgro said of DFA’s infrastructure.<\/p>\n
In terms of the agreement between Seacom\u2019s shareholders, limited financial disclosure is allowed, however, Remgro, which has a\u00a030.0% interest in Seacom, said its share loss amounted to R33 million (2016: loss of R33 million).<\/p>\n
“The headline loss of R113 million (2016: headline loss of R113 million) is mainly due to costs associated with the repair of subsea cable faults, conservative provision of doubtful debts, introduction of a long term management incentive scheme and higher financing costs associated with a term loan,” it said.<\/p>\n
Seacom provides high capacity international fibre optic bandwidth on the African continent. The company started a new line of business where it sells directly to enterprise customers called Seacom Business.<\/p>\n
Overall results:<\/p>\n
Jannie Durand, CEO of Remgro, said: \u201cWe are very cognisant of the deteriorating South African economic conditions and uncertain political environment. However, Remgro will continue to support its existing investments and continue to look at viable investment opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n