NTHC Market Review for the week ended 11/04/2008 Transaction Solutions looks ahead
Transaction Solutions Ghana Limited (Transol), one of the two I.T. listed companies on the GSE has reported unimpressive results for the year ended December 2007. The company recorded a Net profit of GH¢364,400 which is about 51% fall from the previous year's profit of GH¢739,370.
TRANSOL provides information technology enhanced services in the telecommunication, banking and the travel and tourism industries.
Even though the company made a marginal increase of its sales revenue by about 10% from GH¢33.04 million in 2006 to GH¢36.29 million in 20007, Net Earnings fell significantly as a result of high operational cost. Management explained that with the change of ownership of Areeba to MTN, Transol lost a chunk of its business to other competitors. Areeba used to engage only five institutions including Transol to provide Electronic Voucher Recharge (EVR) services to its customers. With the change of ownership, MTN increased the number of EVR providers to 12. Transol subsequently lost its market share from 12% to about 4%. Other reasons for the poor performance include the high infrastructure cost of its business model, unreliable power supply and competition posed by new entrants.
Despite these challenges, management of the company is poised to improve upon its performances by taking advantage of other business opportunities available. The company plans to roll out new services based on the existing infrastructure, strengthen its alliance with companies like MTN, Shell and Ecobank. The company also intends to build new and stronger relationships with Kasapa, TiGo and new entrant Celltel whilst expanding its ATM service s to other banks.
In order to facilitate progress of the company, management has identified specific corporate strategies that it will implement to help it achieve its targets. Some of these include, raising of additional capital for expansion, launching of Ezishop franchise, expansion of retail presence with the use of vending machines and web retail and the deployment of mobile merchants. As a long term plan, management is also considering setting up Transol in selected countries with virgin markets and replicate its business model there.