Photo by: Bloomberg
JSE-listed Telkom on Monday posted double-digit gains in earnings for the year ended March 31, 2015, allowing the company to resume the suspended dividend payouts promised by CEO Sipho Maseko last year.
For the first time since 2011, Telkom declared a dividend to shareholders, comprising a final dividend of 215c and a special dividend of 30c, owing to a “strong financial position and healthy cash balances”.
“Our healthy financial position will not only allow us to take advantage of any promising opportunities that could come our way, it has also made it possible for us to pay a dividend this year,” Maseko said on Monday.
Telkom’s normalised headline earnings a share jumped 60% to 532.5c and basic earnings a share surged 135.7% to 542.3c for the year.
The normalised results excluded the R591-million retrenchment, voluntary early retirement and severance package costs for 1 205 employees, the related R165-million tax hit and the R546-million tax benefit on the post-retirement medical aid payment, as well as the one-off R2.1-billion net gain recognised on the curtailment of the post-retirement medical aid liability.
These items, which did not form part of normal business operations, had resulted in a 19.5% contraction in after-tax profit to R2.9-billion for the year under review, with profit for the year falling to R3.2-billion, compared with the R3.9-billion posted in the prior year.
Normalised earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation increased by 15.1% to R9-billion.
Telkom reported a lift in group operating revenue from R31.3-billion the year before to R31.7-billion for the year under review.
On a like-for-like basis net revenue increased by 3.1% to R26-billion, while group operating costs, excluding depreciation, were down 1.2% to R17.7-billion.
Further, group net debt decreased by 92.8% to R151-million and free cash flow generated surged 240.4% to R3.9-billion for the year under review.