Company news in brief

Nedbank FY profit edges upSouth Africa's number four lender by value Nedbank reported a slight increase in full-year profit on Friday as cost cuts and lower bad debts offset a weak showing at its west-African associate Ecobank.Diluted headline EPS, the primary profit gauge in South Africa that strips out one-off items, rose 2.4% to 2 406 cents in the year ended December.Excluding the results from Ecobank, which suffered R744 million in associate income losses, Nedbank would have managed about an 8% rise in headline EPS, the company said.Net interest income, a key measure of lending profitability, was 4.5% higher at R27.6 billion.“While structural challenges remain, 2018 has started with renewed optimism that these will be addressed and that improving business and consumer confidence should lead to a cyclical upturn off a low base,” Nedbank said in a statement. – Nampa/ReutersLiberty FY profit up 8%South African insurer Liberty Holdings reported an 8% rise in annual profit on Friday, a sign that a turnaround strategy under a new chief executive is bearing fruit.Normalised headline EPS came in at 2 719 cents in the year ended December compared with a 2 527 cents a year earlier.Liberty, a unit of lender Standard Bank, is in the middle of a turnaround plan that includes greater focus on higher margin products and slower offshore expansion under new chief executive David Munro, who took the reigns almost a year ago from Thabo Dloti.Dloti resigned after clashing with the board over his acquisition-fuelted expansion strategy across Africa at the expense of what Standard Bank has said was the neglect of the vast, largely untapped lower-income market at home.“We are confident that the group will emerge from this period of change with significantly greater potential to serve the needs of all stakeholders, the company said. – Nampa/ReutersAB InBev posts profit surge for 2017AB InBev, the world's biggest brewer, on Thursday posted a huge jump in net profit for last year, drinking in the synergies from its blockbuster acquisition of rival SABMiller in 2016.AB InBev, the brewer of Stella Artois and Budweiser, said in a statement that its net profit rose 64% to US$7.967 billion in 2017.For 2018, Belgium-based AB Inbev expects to see strong growth in revenue and a wider profit margin, with revenue per unit growing faster than inflation as costs drop.The group, which also owns Corona and Beck's, saw operating profit – which serves as a benchmark for internal forecasts – rise by 13.4% on a comparable basis to US$22.1 billion.Full-year revenues grew by 5.1% to US$56.4 billion. – Nampa/ReutersRio Tinto's Mozambique woes mountAustralia's corporate watchdog said on Friday it has launched court action against global miner Rio Tinto and two former executives for misleading investors about the coal reserves it reported in a US$4 billion acquisition in Mozambique.The Australian Securities and Investments Commission said the company and its former chief executive Tom Albanese and former CEO Guy Elliott had made deceptive statements in their 2011 annual report, published in 2012.Rio Tinto had no immediate comment on ASIC's action, but has previously denied any wrongdoing in a similar case brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.Rio Tinto bought Riversdale for US$4 billion in 2011, wrote off about US$3.5 billion of its value and sacked Albanese and other executives involved in the deal in 2013. The Mozambique deal came on top of hefty writedowns on a previous acquisition.The SEC alleges that the company and executives inflated the value of coal assets in Mozambique and concealed critical information while tapping the market for billions of US dollars. – Nampa/ReutersMondi announces special payoutPaper and packaging group Mondi announced a special payout of 100 euro cents per share after full-year underlying profit rose 4%, benefiting from solid demand and higher average selling prices in most of its businesses.Underlying operating profit rose to 1.02 billion euro (US$1.25 billion) in 2017, up from 981 million euro a year earlier, Mondi said in a statement.The group, which is listed in London and Johannesburg, had warned on full-year results in October because of cost pressures and currency headwinds but said on Friday that operational performance improvements had countered inflationary pressures in its cost base. – Nampa/Reuters

Company news in brief

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Company news in brief

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