Listed firms poised for good tidings
Stock market experts have said most listed companies adapted to the Covid pandemic this year and are poised to post better results than last year.
This comes at a time some of the Malawi Stock Exchange-listed companies have issued statements pointing to increased profitability for the year ending December 31 2021.
A statement issued by Sunbird Tourism Limited indicates that the company’s performance for the year is expected to be better than the previous year by more than 150 percent.
Another statement by Press Corporation Limited shows that its profit will exceed that of last year by more than 50 percent.
FMB Capital Holdings has also announced that its profits will grow by over 40 percent while Airtel Malawi is expecting a profit rise of over 35 percent this year.
In an interview, Alliance Stockbrokers Limited Operations Manager Thokozani Saulosi said most of the companies were affected by the Covid pandemic but were able to strategise for the businesses to be profitable.
“The companies have re-strategised their business models to be able to post profits. Illovo Sugar had already started implementing its strategy before the Covid pandemic but you can see that, in their just ended year, they have also performed well. But we should also remember that most of these companies were already doing better in the previous year such as Airtel and FMBCH,” Saulosi said.
Stockbrokers Malawi Limited Equity and Money Market Dealer Kondwani Makwakwa added that the variation in the degree of the profits depends on the impact the pandemic has had from one company to another.
“You would note that the hotel industry was heavily impacted by the Covid pandemic and therefore the opening up of business has meant a substantial gain for companies such as Sunbird Tourism Limited and for companies that were not heavily impacted, their growth margin could be seen as minimal,” Makwakwa said.
Among other things, listing requirements of the MSE mandates companies to publish a trading statement as soon as there is reasonable degree of certainty that the financial results for the period to be reported upon next will differ by at least 20 percent from that of the corresponding period.
