ESWATINI BUSINESS ACQUISITION DRIVES VUNANI PROFITS

MBABANE - Black-owned financial services group Vunani Limited has reported substantial growth in revenue in their set of results for the six-month period ended August 31, 2020.  

According to a statement shared to this publication, this was largely influenced by the inclusion of recent acquisitions of an insurance and fund management business here in Eswatini and Botswana, respectively. It was reported last year that a transaction between MMI Holdings Limited and Vunani Limited the latter, together with the Metropolitan Life Swaziland management, acquired the majority stake of 67 per cent in MMI’s Eswatini insurance business, Metropolitan Life Swaziland (MetLife Swaziland) and its wholly owned subsidiary Momentum Insurance Swaziland Limited.

The remaining 33 per cent of MetLife Swaziland is held by Eswatini Development and Savings Bank (Eswatini Bank), which was  originally invested in 2010. Metropolitan Life Eswatini changed its name to Oracle Life Insurance Eswatini in March this year. According to a correspondence from Vunani which was copied to this publication yesterday, continuing improvement of the fund management business and a return to profitability in the stock broking business were the other big contributors to the impressive figures. Group revenue increased by 69 per cent to E288.2 million from E170.5 million.  Total profit increased by 90 per cent to E36 million from E18.9 million in the prior year. It was reported that the designation of financial services businesses as essential services providers during the hard lockdown led to minimum disruptions and yielded positive results for the Group.

Tough

Notwithstanding the strong performance amid tough trading conditions, business segments such as commodity trading were strongly affected by the hard lockdown restrictions prevalent throughout most of the period. Butana Khoza, CEO of Vunani said: “Trading under the Covid-19 climate coupled with a stagnant economy has been a challenge for the Group. Our strategy to turnaround our underperforming stockbroking business, company-wide business optimisation and successful integration of our acquisitions has borne fruit.  This will be important as we focus attention on the next strategic intervention which entails separating our principal investment activities from our operating financial services business.”

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: