Cape Town-based Sekunjalo Investments says its strong earnings were powered by a restructuring programme marking a turnaround in its key marine business, strong operational performance in its IT division, while significantly reducing costs throughout the group.

CEO, Khalid Abdulla says “amid the global recession and subsequent weak recovery the Group took the opportunity to significantly reduce its finance costs, renegotiated prices and improve efficiency to deliver excellent results”.

Abdulla says “the Group also significantly reduced its exposure to the strong rand, preempting the currency’s strong gains by renegotiating better prices in its export markets. Currently only a quarter of the Group’s earnings are derived from international markets”.

Abdulla believes the feather in Sekunjalo’s cap in what has been extremely tough trading conditions, is the fact that it has managed to save more than R30m in costs and improve the Group’s gross margin to 28% from 23% the year before. Abdulla says “it’s no exaggeration saying that the financial year under review was probably one of Sekunjalo’s most significant years in its history”.