.gif)
Pioneer asset management company VB Holdings Company Limited (VBL) is forecasting a better performance in the second half of 2009, saying first half financial results for the year looked like they would exceed last year’s $1.6 million turnover.
Addressing a brokers’ briefing at the South Pacific Stock Exchange, managing director Nitish Niranjan said the company recorded a turnover of $762,227 in the first half of 2009.
“We are expecting the second half of the year to improve from where we have been in the first half,” Niranjan said.
VBL’s turnover fell from $2 million in 2007 to $1.6million in 2008 due to the deteriorating economic situation, he said.
VBL look after two classes of assets - property and fleet.
The company recently won a contract to lease a fleet of vehicles to government as part of its new fleet management initiative.
“We did win a small portion of business in the last six months,” Niranjan said, without divulging details of the number of vehicles involved and the value of the State contract, despite questions from the floor.
In 2008, VBL recorded a price growth of 3.4 per cent (currently trading at $2.77), issued a dividend yield of 1.7 per cent and provided bonus shares to its shareholders of 2.3 per cent with a total return of 7.6 per cent.
“The significance of this is that although you saw earlier that the economic environment deteriorated, income deteriorated but we continued to give good returns to our shareholders and we have been consistent in the last six months,” said Niranjan.
“We also made sure that we gave dividends to our community and since 1998 we have been providing scholarships around Fiji regardless of religion, ethnicity or gender, purely based on merit,” he added.
The company first issued four scholarships in 1989 and is now giving out 33.
