Press Corporation plc says it has successfully acquired a 10 percent equity stake in Liberia Merchant Capital Limited, a financial discount house based in Monrovia, Liberia.
The Malawi Stock Exchange-listed conglomerate has also entered into a revenue-sharing agreement with oil and gas exploration and drilling firm Africa Fortesa Corporation of Senegal.
Speaking during the Annual General Meeting in Blantyre on Friday, PCL board chairperson Randson Mwadiwa said the moves are part of extending the firm’s reach beyond traditional markets and geographies and delivering impactful greenfield developments as well as pursuing high-potential mergers and acquisitions.
He said: “To sustain progress, we unveiled our strategic plan and one of the things is to diversify our portfolio now working to set up a solar plant, reviving the fish industry.
“With diversification, we will be able to rise the headwinds of economic problems we are seeing.”
Mwadiwa said significant progress has been made on exiting Malawi Telecommunications Limited (MTL), which grew its profit before tax by 121 percent to K1.1 billion from a net loss of K5.1 billion the previous year.
He said the move is part of their wider strategy of realigning investments in the telecommunication segment.
During the year under review, PCL, which has several subsidiaries delivered a growth of 42 percent in turnover to K559.6 billion while profit after-tax grew by 68 percent to K126.3 billion.
Meanwhile, Minority Shareholders Association of Listed Companies secretary general Frank Harawa has said while shareholders are happy with performance of the company and decision to divest from MTL, listing rather than selling companies would be the best option.
But Mwadiwa said listing “is something we are seriously looking into”, adding that the company needs to be sure that it would not cause problems and that some of those subsidiaries are not 100 percent owned by PCL, a situation that he said needs further discussion with other shareholders.
Its subsidiaries include National Bank of Malawi plc, TNM plc, MTL, Press Properties, PressCane Limited, Ethanol Company Limited, The Foods Limited (Maldeco) and MacSteel Limited while it also has interest in Puma Energy and Limbe Leaf Malawi Limited.
