Investment holding company SecureData had a good start to the financial year, despite a slight drop in turnover.
SecureData's subsidiaries provide products, solutions and services focusing on information risk management (IRM).
It says, during the first half, it continued to expand on its vision of being a significant provider of IRM solutions and services in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Turnover for the six months to January declined 5%, to R220 million, mostly due to the negative effect of a stronger rand on the reporting of results achieved at UK-based MIS Corporate Defence Solutions.
Exceptional items
Several once-off items, including foreign exchange losses, dragged headline and earnings per share lower by 4c. Stripping out the exceptional items, earnings per share would be 4.8c a share, compared with 3.1c last year.
Both headline and earnings per share were 0.8c, up about 14% from last year's 0.7c.
In February, the company expected headline earnings and earnings per share to be between 9% and 19% higher than the 0.7c it reported a year ago. Stripping out items such as foreign exchange losses and inter group loans, the company said earnings per share would be 50% to 60% higher.
SecureData is confident of taking advantage of attractive opportunities in the sector in the future. It says it still has a significant presence in the market, and operating margins are improving.
“The IRM market has historically proven to be quite resilient during downturns in the economic cycle and, although it remains difficult to predict to what extent the current financial market turmoil will impact buyer activity, the board of directors believes the group is well positioned to take advantage of attractive opportunities within the IRM sector well into the future,” SecureData says.
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