{"id":454252,"date":"2020-12-03T09:48:17","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T07:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=454252"},"modified":"2020-12-03T09:48:17","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T07:48:17","slug":"alexander-forbes-lays-bare-south-africas-unemployment-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/454252\/alexander-forbes-lays-bare-south-africas-unemployment-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexander Forbes lays bare South Africa’s unemployment reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

JSE-listed financial services group Alexander Forbes has seen the impact of business closures and retrenchments from the Covid-19 pandemic filtering through its members.<\/p>\n

The group on Thursday (3 December) published its unaudited results for the six months ended September 2020,\u00a0 showing a 3% decline in operating income from continuing operations to R1.54 billion, with performance impacted by the challenging economic environment.<\/p>\n

Profit from continuing operations (before non-trading and capital items) of R382 million, down 5% year on year due to the decline in top-line growth and the impact of stranded costs.<\/p>\n

Headline earnings per share from continuing operations improved 6% to 18.8 cents, however, HEPS for total operations of 14.5 cents, declined 41%, it said.<\/p>\n

An interim dividend of 13 cents (2019: 18 cents) per share was declared.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Worryingly, Alexander Forbes noted that its active member base has shrunk to 895,000 members, from 914,000 active members at its full year 2020 reporting.<\/p>\n

It pointed out that as many as 15,000 members had been retrenched between June and September, amid the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, and resulting lockdown. The most retrenchments were recorded during September (4,613).<\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s official unemployment rate climbed to a record high of 30.8% for the third quarter of 2020, data from Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) showed last month. The expanded definition, which includes discouraged jobseekers, climbed to more than 43%, with unemployment increasing 2.2 million (52.1%) to 6.5 million, compared to the second quarter of 2020.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Alexander Forbes said that the impact of Covid-19 and the expected future consequences on the economy will impact its original growth and cost targets.<\/p>\n

“Whilst our clients are experiencing the benefits of our client-centric and advice-led consulting approach, the top line will continue to be under pressure for the next 18 to 24 months,” it said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite the tough trading conditions that the business has faced over the past six months, the core business remains stable,\u201d said chief executive officer, Dawie de Villiers.<\/p>\n

“We remain confident in our advice-led strategy and believe that continued delivery against our objectives will reflect positively in the performance of the business over the medium-term.”<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Ramaphosa promised to create 800,000 jobs in South Africa \u2013 here\u2019s how it\u2019s going<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The JSE-listed financial services group Alexander Forbes has seen the impact of business closures and retrenchments from the Covid-19 pandemic filtering through its members.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":454284,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[6280,26],"class_list":["post-454252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-alexander-forbes","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454252"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":454302,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454252\/revisions\/454302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}