{"id":46643,"date":"2013-09-26T15:19:02","date_gmt":"2013-09-26T13:19:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=46643"},"modified":"2013-09-27T08:52:06","modified_gmt":"2013-09-27T06:52:06","slug":"first-clean-audit-in-a-decade-for-sentech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/46643\/first-clean-audit-in-a-decade-for-sentech\/","title":{"rendered":"First clean audit in a decade for Sentech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sentech<\/a>, the state owned\u00a0signal distributor for the South African broadcasting sector, has announced a 20% rise in operating profit from continuing operations to R177 million\u00a0for the financial year 2012\/2013.<\/p>\n

As a statement of commitment to clean administration and corporate governance, Sentech said it received a clean audit for the 2012\/2013 financial year by independent external auditors.<\/p>\n

The company noted that this clean audit represents a first for the company in well over 10 years.<\/p>\n

The group also noted that it\u00a0exceeded a\u00a0service delivery target for the 2012\/2013 financial year to achieve 80% population coverage of the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT<\/a>) network.<\/p>\n

The group said it recorded 80.4% population coverage using the DVB-T2 standard,\u00a0four days before the end of the financial year, namely\u00a0March 2013.<\/p>\n

“Moving forward, the company is confident that the entire network migration program will be completed by the end of March 2014,” Sentech said.<\/p>\n

Sentech said that revenue from continuing operations (excluding dual illumination) increased by 7% to R831 million, while cash generation improved with cash generated from operations increasing from R277 million to R299 million.<\/p>\n

The state entity \u00a0said that it spent R457 million on “additions to property plant and equipment in 2013 for DTT and other projects”.<\/p>\n

During the period, Sentech said it also cleared a number of legacy issues, with some dating back to 1997.<\/p>\n

These included final\u00a0clarity from National Treasury<\/a> on the treatment of interest earned on government grant funds.<\/p>\n

The determination from National Treasury, received in November 2012, means that the interest that was previously recognized as income in previous years will be refunded to National Treasury.<\/p>\n

The total amount is R173 million, net of taxation, and includes R21 million for the current year.<\/p>\n

It also pointed to a settlement with Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa<\/a>) of prior year licence fees of R43 million. R8 million was recognized in the 2011\/2012 financial year and an additional R35 million was recognized in in the current financial year.<\/p>\n

Sentech said in August that it would\u00a0will rebrand Vivid as a universal access direct-to-home satellite platform, \u201cFreevision\u201d, from 30 September 2013.<\/p>\n

According to Sentech, the launch of Freevision is a \u201cgap-filler\u201d while the migration from analogue to digital terrestrial television (DTT) is ongoing.<\/p>\n

In its press statement, the state-owned signal distributor explained that a direct-to-home satellite service was envisioned as part of the DTT migration for those few who would not be able to receive terrestrial TV signals.<\/p>\n

All licensed DTT broadcasters will be able to use the Freevision platform, Sentech said.<\/p>\n

Sentech is expected to announce the retail pricing and channel line-up at an event on September 30.<\/p>\n

More on Sentech<\/h3>\n

Sentech confirms new satellite TV service Freevision<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Sentech blocks Zim from viewing SABC<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Sentech clarifies R584 million misconception<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sentech to return spectrum to Icasa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sentech has announced a 20% rise in operating profit from continuing operations to R177 million for the financial year 2012\/2013. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":35177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[2092,26,36,1646],"class_list":["post-46643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-dtt","tag-headline","tag-icasa","tag-sentech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46643","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=46643"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46687,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46643\/revisions\/46687"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}