OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday
SEVERAL of South Africa’s top black empowerment companies will be forming a consortium to re-capitalise Sekunjalo Investments, the listed empowerment group hit by the liquidation of Leisurenet last year, says Sekunjalo CEO Iqbal Surve.
The groups would be pooling their resources to provide Sekunjalo with enough funds to become a significant empowerment vehicle, allowing it to embark on other projects as well, he said. Sekunjalo will be the vehicle through which the groups act, after it is re-capitalised through an equity transaction.
Sekunjalo earlier issued a cautionary announcement on the JSE Securities Exchange (JSE), saying the Board was “assessing various methods of re-capitalising the group in order to continue to take advantage of the empowerment opportunities presented to the company.”
Surve said he was “confident” Sekunjalo would recover funds from Leisurenet, in which it was the largest shareholder with an 11.3% stake. “We are committed to the litigation process,” he said.
In December German electrical and electronics engineering group Siemens sold a 13% stake in its local subsidiary, Siemens Southern Africa, to Sekunjalo for a discounted price of R92m.
Sekunjalo reported a net attributable loss for the year to August 2000 of R120.7m, or 137.2 cents per share, after recording losses on investments of R155m. Excluding investment losses, headline earnings were 11.8 cents per share, compared with 24.2 cents in the previous year, and were largely due to good growth in the company’s health care and fishing interests.
Sekunjalo’s share price was last quoted at 28 cents per share, up 3.8% from 26 cents late Friday. The counter lost about 80% of its value in 2000, but is off a low of 10 cents reached in October 2000.
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