This financial year has been a remarkable success for diversified local group, Vision Investments Limited.

As the company’s financial year has come to an end, Vision Investments Limited director and chief executive officer PL Munasinghe proudly announced that the company had recorded a total revenue of $170.3million.

This is a 26% increase compared to the previous year which had a record of $134.7million.

The company’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization stands at $26.8 million, a 19% increase compared to the previous year with a record of $22.5 million.

The announcement was shared amongst its shareholders yesterday at the company’s annual general meeting at Courts Samabula Mega Store.

Its profit before tax increased by 28% with a total of $20.5 million.

According to Mr Munasinghe these operating outcomes exceeded the prospective dividends discussed in the Information Memorandum issued in connection with the listing of the company on the South Pacific Stock Exchange.

As a result of the company’s tremendous progress, its earnings per share increased by 20% which is an increase from 15 cents per share to 18 cents per share.

Mr Munasinghe said the company’s dividends per share currently stands at 9.75 cents.

This is 54% of the company’s Net Earnings that has been distributed to its shareholders.

As per the company’s balance sheet, the company’s total assets is valued at $141.7 million.

The company’s shareholders equity stands at $75.6 million which is 53% of the total assets.

The company’s debt to equity ratio is 0.9:1.

He added the balance sheet proves that the company has the capacity to take up  debt to invest in new business opportunities.

Share Price in the South Pacific Stock Exchange:

According to Mr Munasinghe, the company had performed extremely well.

The company’s share price stood at $2.46 on the 20th of September but increased on Monday to $2.48.

Over the 19 months since the company was listed under SPSE, the company’s share price appreciated to 41% or 26% on a per annum basis.

He added the company has about 300 shareholders.

Financial Statements of PNG Operations

The current year financials had included, for the first time, the financial records of the company’s subsidiary- Vision Homecentres Limited operating in Papua New Guinea.

As part of the company’s plans to expand across the region, VIL had started setting up its operations in PNG on March 2016.

It therefore commenced trading in February 2017 which is one and a half months before the year ended.

The PNG operation made a loss of $1.1 million due to the prolonged set up period and subdued trading, according to Mr Munasinghe.

Despite that, he said the shareholders must look at the long term view as PNG is a large market.

“We must be well placed to take advantage of the PNG economy rebounds,” he added.

Moving Forward

“We are confident in delivering another strong performance this year,” he said.

The company has been pouring in a lot of focus in its PNG subsidiary and aims to stabalise its operation so it could start making contributions to the group’s company results.

“We are always looking for opportunities in the market to invest,” he said.

The company chose to expand in PNG because it believed that the population presents a significant opportunity although the economy has been facing many challenges recently.

The company’s success was greatly attributed to the management and providing the customers the best experience that is better than any other company in the market.

“It is a very easy statement to make but it is quite difficult to achieve because there is a whole chain of events that we need to perfect to be able to deliver that custom experience,” he said.

The Company comprises  of Courts, Vision Motors,   Mahogany Industries (Fiji) and Vision Finance.

Re-election:

• Independent Non-executive Director Carina Hull
• Director of the Company Navin Patel, Dinesh Patel
• Independent Director      David Evans.

Feedback:  monica.aguilar@fijisun.com.fj