Tradehold’s fortunes have been turned around

INVESTMENT holding company Tradehold has said that its decision to exit non-core assets had turned its fortunes around and allowed it to concentrate its efforts on the property business.

The group yesterday said that the offloading of the assets had resulted in a more focused business.

It said that it had identified a further 37 properties with a total value of R1 billion for sale.

“The proceeds from sales will predominantly be used to reduce debt. A number of these buildings have already been sold, others are awaiting transfer or the outcome of due-diligence processes,” the group said.

The group unbundled its financial services interests to shareholders and listed Mettle Investments separately on the Alternative exchange (AltX) on the JSE in May.

Tradehold said the unbundling has turned it into a dedicated property business with net assets split between the UK and Africa.

Tradehold said the UK portfolio consisted of 40 percent of its total operations, while the US dollar assets in Africa held 8 percent of the business, with the remaining 52 percent being in South African rand.

Tradehold said the restructuring made its performance during the six months to end August not directly comparable with last year.

It said total assets for the period amounted to £843.7 million (R15.5 billion), down from £994m last year. It said total assets for 2017 would have amounted to £929m if financial services were excluded.

The group reported a total profit attributable to shareholders of £5.7m, down from £10.8m.

“The decrease is mainly due to the loss during the reporting period in the fair-value adjustment of its investment properties of £2.1m, compared to a gain of £1.6m in the corresponding period in the 2017 financial year, and financial services net profit of £2.9m in the prior period, compared to profit from discontinued operations of £0.3m in the current period,” the group said.

Revenue declined to £48.6m, down from £50.3m as restated for the discontinued operations while headline earnings per share (Heps) declined to 2.3 pence a share, down from 3.5p. The Heps would have been 2.5p in 2017, excluding the financial services.

Tradehold shares closed unchanged on the JSE yesterday at R12.