m Cubed reports healthy figures
September 30, 2003
By Vera von Lieres
Cape Town - Even with a restructuring of its wealth management business, multimanager m Cubed Holdings managed a pleasing rise in headline earnings a share and net income in the six months to August, figures showed yesterday.
Group managing director John Storey said margins remained tight but a focus on cost control paid off.
Challenging local and global investment market conditions, which ran into the early part of the reporting period, called for a restructuring at the group's wealth management business and supporting areas.
m Cubed has three core business entities: asset management, wealth management and a specialised investment lending and treasury division.
During the six months, headline earnings a share traipsed 12 percent higher to 2.3c on a 15 percent rise in attributable income to R5.8 million. Turnover grew 38 percent to R229 million.
Action taken at the wealth management business had centred on margin and cost containment, Storey explained. The restructuring process would result in cost cuts of about R1 million a month going forward from August.
In addition, management was busy with a margin review of the multimanager portion of the asset management business. Putting this process in place should also result in improvements to net revenue.
On the empowerment front, good progress had been made in finding a black economic empowerment partner to give the multimanager a strong empowerment profile.
"No cautionary is needed yet but we are a lot further down the track than six months ago with a number of proposals on the table."
Assets under management grew by R2 billion to R45 billion mainly due to better market conditions, while assets under administration grew to R61 billion.
Looking ahead, the outlook for m Cubed for the next six months was cautiously optimistic.
"The business should start to show the positive impact of the [wealth management] restructure and cost savings, and will benefit further if investment markets continue to improve."
The counter closed unchanged at 33c yesterday.
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