The restructuring of Medine Group is beginning to bear fruit. On Monday 23 September, the Group published its financial results for the past financial year, i.e. for period July 2018 to June 2019. Medine showed a profit of Rs 269 million compared to a loss of Rs 845 million for the previous financial year, with an overall improvement of Rs 1.1 billion. For the overall operations of the Group, our revenues reached Rs 1.8 billion. Thierry Sauzier, Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Dhiren Ponnusamy, Chief Operating Officer (COO) presented the figures to the community of financial analysts and investors during an analyst meeting convened at Labourdonnais Hotel in Port Louis.
The main reasons for this uptrend in growth are the Rs 440 million profit realised on sales by Medine’s Property Cluster and the operational efficiency programme implemented across the Group.
For the previous financial year (2017-2018), the Group had recorded Rs 845 million loss, comprising Rs 595 million worth of write-offs. If one excludes this one-time adjustment, progress over the past year, as compared to 2017-2018, stands at Rs 518 million. These positive results confirm the relevance of the strategic actions undertaken by the Group in fewer than two years.
As put forward by Thierry Sauzier, the CEO: “Over the past two years, our Group launched an in-depth restructuring of its financial assets, its operations as well as that of the work processes of the teams. Medine’s financial results for the year under review underscores the relevance of our strategy. Uniciti maintains its position as the focal point of the Group’s development project for the western region whilst we continue addressing every sector of activity as being of foremost importance for our overall growth. Although some sectors still present losses, all record a significant improvement in results, which supports the fact that the in-depth work that was set in motion across the Group has had a positive impact. Today, we look forward to future developments confidently.”
The Agriculture cluster recorded a decrease in revenue – from Rs 826 million to Rs 708 million. This is mainly attributable to the price per tonne of sugar and, in a lesser degree, to the negative incidence of climactic conditions on other of the Group’s agricultural activities. As a consequence of significant loss incurred over past years, Medine shut down its milling activities in April 2019 and ceased its aviculture operations to transfer the exploitation of existing infrastructures to an external operator.
The measures implemented to control losses within the Agricultural cluster are effective, as proven by the significant reduction in loss from Rs 680 million for the year 2017-2018 to Rs79 million for the year under review.
We note the same trend across every activity sector of the Group. For instance, the Property cluster records, over all of its portfolios, a profit of Rs 520 million at year end, against Rs 85 million for the previous financial year. Leisure and Education clusters have also significantly improved their performance as they have reduced losses by Rs 34 million and Rs 9 million respectively.
