Huge to report increased year-end earnings

18th May 2020 By: Creamer Media Reporter

JSE-listed Huge Group expects an increase in earnings across the board for the year ended February 29.

The company expects earnings per share (EPS) and headline earnings per share (HEPS) to increase 0% to 5% year-on-year.

EPS will edge up to between 56.84c and 59.68c during the 2020 financial year, when compared with the 56.84c reported in the prior year, while HEPS will increase to between 55.81c and 58.60c, up from the 55.81c reported in the preceding year.

On a normalised basis, EPS will increase 15% to 25% from 48.05c in 2019 to between 55.25c and 60.06c during the year under review.

Normalised HEPS will also increase 15% to 25% to between 54.07c and 58.77c in 2020, from 47.02c in 2019.

Huge, which is in the process of preparing its financial results for the 2020 financial year, has decided that it will report normalised EPS and normalised HEPS in addition to EPS and HEPS.

“Normalised EPS and normalised HEPS take into account adjustments made to financial performance to remove the effects of revenue and expenses that are unusual or one-time influences in order for stakeholders to understand the company's true earnings from its normal operations and to provide an estimate of the earnings that the company would ordinarily generate,” the company said in a trading update.

The 2019 financial year’s normalised EPS and normalised HEPS exclude the effects of donation income of R14.4-million received by the Connectnet Incentive Trust and the consolidation of this donation income in the financial information of Huge.