Group CEO of the Enterprise Group Ltd, says they are focused on growing organically and not fixed on acquiring assets and buying banks.
Keli Gadzepko said the Enterprise Group will rather be expanding onto the Nigerian market with a focus on health insurance.
“It’s not our aggressive posture to do so, we are doing well growing from within but if there is an opportunity, we won’t be foreclosed to it. Depending on the opportunity, we will deal with it. The ones we are pursuing aggressively are health insurance and going into the Nigerian market. But we’re not in the business of buying banks,” he noted.
He spoke to JoyBusiness at the company’s Annual General Meeting in Accra on Tuesday.
Mr Gadzekpo believes the strategic mode of increasing investment income is by diversifying the group’s asset classes to cushion against negative performance on the stock exchange.
The 2018 Annual Report and Financial Statements of Enterprise Group Ltd show that net investment income decreased by 18 percent to GH¢114.5 million in 2018 from GH¢139.7 million in 2017.
This performance was due to a 27.6 percent decline in investment income of Enterprise Life compared to 2017.
The underlying driver was the decline in equity prices on the Ghana Stock Exchange which led to capital losses on their stock holdings.
Meanwhile, Shareholders of Enterprise Group will be receiving a final dividend of 4.5 pesewas per share for 2018.
This was agreed by the board of the Group after growing a net income by 12 percent as against 28 percent in 2017.
Speaking at an Annual General Meeting, Chairman of Enterprise Group Ltd, Trevor Trefgarne, attributed the cause of the meagre share price on the negative performance of the Ghana Stock Exchange in 2017.He explained that “on consideration of the Group’s performance and director’s confidence in future prospects, the board proposed a final dividend of 4.5 pesewas per share for 2018”.Meanwhile, the Group recorded a profit before tax of GH¢96.6 million from GH¢90.4 million representing a 6.9 percent growth. Also, total assets increased by 30 percent from GH¢1,035 million in 2017 to GH¢1,349 million in 2018.
