Women work at the front desk of the Centum Investment Company Limited in Nairobi, Kenya NAIROBI (Reuters) – Kenya’s Centum Investment swung to a pretax loss of 2.3 billion shillings ($21.23 million) in the year to the end of March, from a profit of 5.4 billion shillings a year earlier, the firm said on Tuesday.
The group, whose underlying assets include real estate developments and private equity holdings in consumer, financial, power and agri-business firms, attributed the drop to high financing costs at one of its flagship properties.
The Two Rivers development, which includes one of the biggest shopping malls in Nairobi, reported a loss of 1.9 billion shillings during the period because of high interest payments for its debt, it said. Centum holds a 58% stake in the project.
The boards of the project have started restructuring their balance sheet to reduce the high interest, Centum said in a statement, adding that "significant progress" has been made.
Centum’s earnings were also affected by the lack of income from disposal of assets, which had boosted the prior year’s profit.
"We are cautiously optimistic," it said, citing the start of a strong recovery in its portfolio firms, which suffered from lockdown measures aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus last year.
($1=108.3500 Kenyan shillings)
(Reporting by Duncan Miriri; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Gerry Doyle)
