Chairman role for Ansys CEO
ANSYS CEO Teddy Daka will step down in September to take up an executive chairman role after the successful turnaround of the company’s business.
ANSYS CEO Teddy Daka will step down in September to take up an executive chairman role after the successful turnaround of the company’s business.
Daka, who was previously the nonexecutive chairman, was appointed as interim CEO in June 2012, and over the past four years has grown the company’s annual turnover to about R500m from less than R100m.
Daka said the company was stable, and at a level where “I am comfortable that someone can take over”.
He said assuming the role of an executive chairman instead of nonexecutive chairman was aimed at assisting new management, given that he had been intricately involved in turning around the business. He aims to be in the role for two years.
Rynier van der Watt, CE in charge of strategy, mergers and acquisitions, will take over from Daka as CEO.
Ansys reported a 88.8% rise in revenue to R474m for the year to March. Profit after tax surged 127% to R22.8m.
The strong performance was boosted by the inclusion of the recently acquired Parsec Holdings and its subsidiaries.
Headline earnings per share rose 25.1% to 5.55c.
Ansys develops, produces, distributes, and integrates technology-driven solutions for rail, mining and industrial, defence, and information security, as well as telecommunications.
Revenue from the rail segment grew 45.6% to R137m, while profit declined to R15.9m from R17.1m, mainly due to delayed rollouts by its major clients and a change in the product mix, which has lower gross profit margins than the previous year. The defence and information security operations revenue soared to R90.1m from R9.9m, and profit also skyrocketed to R19m from R1.6m.
Performance in the mining and industrial segment has improved significantly, following the acquisition of Parsec Holdings when compared to the previous year’s results. Revenue for the period rose to R42.5m from R2.1m, with a profit of R5m, up from R2.3m.
The telecommunications operations grew 41% to R204.3m on the back of improved network spending in the telecommunications sector. Profit, however, dropped to R6.1m from R7.1m, largely due to unforeseen foreign exchange losses of R3.8m.
Ansys expects an improved performance for the 2017 financial year. Daka expects growth to come from all the operations, with telecommunications being the fastest growing market for Ansys, due to increased capital investment by telecoms companies. “None of the businesses are shrinking,” Daka said.
Defence and information security operations were also showing growth, and there was moderate growth from the railways segment.