Trustco announces staggering financial results

NAMIBIAN financial services company Trustco announced a whopping 38 per cent increase in gross profits to N$227 million during the year ending 31 March 2009, although the results are still pending sign-off from external auditors.

The huge profit margin comes on the back of a 71 per cent increase in revenue to N$484 million.
By far the biggest contributor to the growth in revenue was financial services outside Namibia. This sector grew at nearly 200 per cent to N$267 million, but profits were down by 8 per cent compared to last year.
Trustco Financial Services, as it is now called, operates in South Africa after buying up DEX Group Financial Services there.
Profits came mainly from the core Namibian businesses of the company, Micro Finance and Micro Insurance, both of which grew at over 30 per cent.
Also, there was a noted spike in profit in the second half of the financial year as the company sold off non-core businesses like the Iitumba restaurant and Café Society.
The profits of the property, development and media segment of Trustco, which includes the Informanté newspaper and Trustco Air Services, dipped 5 per cent compared to last year.
Current liabilities of the company stand at N$391 million, a four per cent increase from last year, while current assets sit at N$762 million.
In his presentation on the results, Deputy Managing Director Jan Jones said the company hopes to have revenue of N$5 billion by 2013 in a strategy he called ‘five over five’.
But he said a major obstacle to achieving this goal was the current difficulty in getting capital due to the financial crisis, as banks tighten their lending policy.
Jones however said Trustco was largely immune from a direct impact of the crisis because their business model had ‘safety in numbers’.
‘If 1 000 guys go off the books this month, 1 000 guys will be on the books again next month,’ he said, referring to the company’s low-premium policy.
He said Trustco’s move to list on the JSE Africa board had paid off, as there had been ‘more trades than in the Namibian market’.