18 Dec 2016

Botswana Telecommunications Corporation Limited (BTC) new managing director says the corporation’s business performance has surpassed the projected growth captured in the company’s prospectus.

Speaking at BTC’s half year results for the six months ended September 2016, Mr Anthony Masunga announced that the company had seen a solid set of financial results and foresaw bright future for the company.

“Since the listing of the company, we have had challenges regarding the stock but in recent months it has stabilised and it grew by four to five points,” he said, adding that Batswana mad the right choice by investing in BTC.

He indicated that revenue increased by four per cent (P32 million) from P742 million to P774 million which has been a result of more focus on high revenue growth areas, both in the retail and wholesale sectors.

“The highest revenue growth achievements were mainly in the areas of national telephony (9 per cent), mobile (6 per cent) and data services (8 per cent),” he said.

Mr Masunga further said the company’s balance sheet remained healthy with total assets at P23 billion.

Touching on the new look board, Mr Masunga welcomed the addition of Ms Lorato Boakgomo-Ntakhwana as the new board chairperson and Mr Mclean Letshwiti.

“We took into consideration calls by our shareholders when they called for an addition of independent board members and we have obliged,” he said.

On the company’s strategy, Mr Masunga said it was premised on an increased customer focus and a journey towards seamless delivery of fixed and mobile and convergence based products and services.

For his part, general manager-finance, Mr Abel Bogatsu, said the BTC board had approved a dividend of 3.6 thebe per share payable to all shareholders registered in the books of the company at close of business on December 30.

“The interim dividend will be paid net of applicable withholding taxes under the Botswana Income Tax Act on or before February 10 2017,” he said.

He said profit after tax rose by 19 per cent from P73 million to P87 million.

“As for total costs, they rose by 3 per cent from P668 million to P686 million,” he said.

Speaking on the future outlook of the company, he said that they are looking to grow the company by five per cent  to six per cent.

He noted that so far the company has approved P452 million for the CAPEX project which would invest mobile and wireless network, converged billing platform and a data centre.

“Consistent with global market trends and dictates, future growth in the telecommunication sector shall be through innovative broadband, data products and services. Our future focus therefore is to derive an increased proportion of our revenues from broadband and data related products and services,” he said, adding that this shall be backed by continued investments in the fixed and mobile broadband solutions, making use of new and more efficient fibre based technologies and latest long term evolution (LTE) mobile solutions. ENDS