TransCentury chairman Zephaniah Mbugua (right) shakes hands with former CEO Gachao Kiuna. Photo/File Listed firm, TransCentury narrowed its losses by 19.1 per cent to Sh3.5 billion in 2018 from Sh 4.3 billion in 2017.
Even so, total revenue collected dropped by 25 per cent to Sh4.2 billion during the period under review from 5.7 billion in the previous year this was caused by a reduction in cost of sales.
The firm attributed the reduction in revenue to slow execution of it’s order book due to working capital challenges.
“The improved performance despite loss in revenue was achieved since we successfully focused on high margin business,” the firm said in a statement.
In late April, TransCentury and its subsidiary, East African Cables announced that they would be late in publishing their financial results since they were still engaged in an ongoing transaction.
Capital Markets law requires public companies to publish their annual results four months after their fiscal year-end.
The two firms expected to release their earnings report by June 30, 2019, 60 days after the deadline.
However in early July the two firms released a statement that pushed the release date to on or before 31 July, 2019.
“The regrettable delay is due to the ongoing transaction earlier announced via a joint cautionary announcement ,” the two firms said in the statement, adding this has impacted on audit timelines.
TransCentury has been struggling with a heavy debt burden, losses and a plunge in its share price but recently completed a debt restructuring deal with East African cables that has reduced the group’s debt by almost half.
East Africa Cables who also released their results, narrowed their losses to Sh568 million in 2018from Sh662 million in 2017.Before they released the results , the Nairobi bourse had tasked TransCentury to provide quarterly updates on progress made in improving the situation while East African Cables was required to submit monthly status updates on implementation of its undertaking to remedy the working capital position within one year.