NAIROBI (Reuters) – Kenya’s Centum Investment Co Plc said on Tuesday its pretax loss narrowed to 1.64 billion shillings ($13.83 million)in the year to end-March from a loss of 2.3 billion the previous year.
Real estate forms the bulk of Centum’s assets, but private-equity assets in the consumer, financial, agribusiness and power sectors account for a fifth of its total, in addition to shares in listed firms and government securities.
The firm said investment and other income rose to 1.08 billion shillings from 684.1 million, while operating and administrative costs fell to 685.8 million shillings from 715 million.
The net asset value per share, a key measure of performance for investment firms that deducts liabilities from assets, dropped to 62.1 shillings from 62.85 shillings in the previous year.
Total assets jumped to 118.83 billion shillings from 109.43 billion during the year.
It declared a dividend of 0.59 shillings per share, up from 0.33 shillings a year earlier.
In June, Centum said it had agreed to sell its stake of 83.4% in Kenya’s Sidian Bank to Nigeria’s Access Bank for 4.3 billion shillings.
($1=118.6000 Kenyan shillings)
(Reporting by George Obulutsa; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Clarence Fernandez)
