• Laments N50bn Unpaid Invoices, Eyes 850mw Capacity By Year-end

Following Wednesday’s release of its audited score-card for the year ended December 31, 2016, the management of conglomerate- Transnational Corporation of Nigeria (Transcorp) Plc, on Thursday raised shareholders’ hope that the woeful 2016 financials may be reversed after all, saying the less than expected performance arose from an unrealized foreign exchange loss arising from the Naira’s devaluation against the US$.
A summary of its corporate action for the period under review, signed by the group’s chief executive, Emmanuel Nnorom, expressed strong belief “that the impact of the difficult operating environment is temporal and through diligent execution of our growth strategy, our investment proposition remains strong in the near term.”
The loss, he explained, followed a US$ acquisition facility for the group’s power subsidiary, with exchange rate falling to N304.5/$ from the N196/$ at the beginning of the 2016 financial year, besides the problem of sourcing foreign currency that affected plan to convert the USD facility to local currency.
The group expressed hopes also that the continued liberalization of the forex market in line with recent development, the group hopes, would help create the needed liquidity and solution for the USD facility.
The group’s woes could have been worse, Nnorom added, if not for the management’s efficient liquidity management despite a debt of N50bn from invoices generated for power production at an average of 55% of available capacity during the period, down from 65% in previous year, a situation that was blamed on “the deteriorating gas supply situation from gas pipeline disruptions.
“Despite this, Transcorp Power remains a top three player in terms of power contributed to the national grid,” he stressed, adding that the group would recover significantly from the exchange loss in the year by maintaining cost levels.
“We are confident of improved fundamentals going forward as we are increasing our available generation capacity to 850mw by year-end taking advantage of recently improving gas situation,” the company assured.
The statement also hinged its optimism for future improvements on the fact that its second hotel- the Transcorp Hotel Calabar started a track of strong performance achieving profitability in the process, just as infrastructure upgrade at its flagship Transcorp Hilton Abuja is expected to generate more revenue and profit.