The CFO reports that the financial services group has managed to stand by its earnings target.
Momentum Metropolitan Holdings has announced its annual financial results for the year ended 30 June 2019, reporting “steady progress with the three-year reset-and-grow strategy announced a year ago”.
About the results, Momentum Metropolitan CFO Risto Ketola said that he is “very pleased”.
The solid results, according to a statement, were underpinned by resilient operational performance in most of Momentum Metropolitan’s businesses, supported by efficiency improvements and “underwriting results across the group remaining at favourable levels”.
The key highlights, according to the statement, was a 53 percent increase in diluted normalised headline earnings to R3.1 billion for the year ended as well as a 61 percent increase in diluted normalised headline earnings per share. These results reflect the impact of the share buy-back programme that Momentum Metropolitan completed in November 2018.
The statement also reported that the financial results from the comparative year were impacted by large negative operating basis changes and investment variances across the South African retail businesses and the rest of Africa. Excluding the impact of operating basis changes and investment variances in both years, normalised headline earnings improved by 21 percent year-on-year.
“Despite the focus on expenses, Momentum Metropolitan’’s sales volumes have done OK,” Risto added.
The group also reported an ordinary dividend of 70 cents per ordinary share for the full year 2019, which includes a final ordinary dividend of 35 cents per ordinary share.
“The balance sheet remains strong with a solvency cover of 2.1 times the Solvency Capital Requirement,” Risto said.
Risto concluded that:
“We’ve also managed to stand by our earnings target of between R3.6 billion and R4.0 billion by 2021.”
