Sentech?s clean audit

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Sentech s clean audit --

Thu, 26 Sep 2013 16:49

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South African parastatal signal distributor Sentech has issued a statement announcing the results of its performance for the financial year 2012/2013.

The statement reads: At the beginning of the financial year, the company presented a corporate plan designed to accelerate interventions in the communication sector in general, and the broadcasting/media space in particular. These interventions are founded on the strategic framework formulated in the 2011/2014 corporate plan, placing an emphasis on the pursuit of a public service mandate for affordable universal access to communication services.

A specific service delivery target for the 2012/2013 financial year was to achieve 80% population coverage of the digital terrestrial television (DTT) network. The company exceeded this target, and recorded 80.4% population coverage four days before the end of the financial year. Moving forward, the company is confident that the entire network migration programme will be completed by the end of March 2014.

Sentech delivered global signal contribution and distribution services to CAF for the AFCON 2013 tournament from each of the tournament venues. These services were delivered with 100% availability throughout the event and, according to the AFCON 2013 Local Organising Committee (LOC), almost a billion people globally were able to watch the games.

As a statement of commitment to clean administration and corporate governance, Sentech received a clean audit for the 2012/2013 financial year by independent external auditors. In this respect, the opinion on the company s financials were unmodified, the company was certified as a going concern and there were no material findings on pre-determined objectives, compliance with laws and regulations and the status of internal controls. The company notes that this clean audit is a first for the company in well over 10 years.

It has also been a financially solid performance year for the company with the following as notable achievements:

Revenue from continuing operations (excluding dual illumination) increased by 7% from R776m to R831m.

Operating profit from continuing operations increased by 20% to R177m.

Cash generation improved with cash generated from operations increasing from R277m to R299m.

R457m was spent on additions to property plant and equipment in 2013 for DTT and other projects.

During the period Sentech also cleared a number of legacy issues, with some dating back to 1997. These included:

Final clarity from National Treasury on the treatment of interest earned on government grant funds. Interest. The determination from National Treasury, received in November 2012, means that the interest that was previously recognized as income in previous years will be refunded to National Treasury. The total amount is R173m, net of taxation, and includes R21m for the current year.

ICASA settlement of prior year licence fees of R43m. R8m was recognised in the 2011/2012 financial year and an additional R35m was recognised in in the current financial year.

From a service delivery perspective in terms of the company s mandate, the following were notable achievements:

18 new Low Power/ Low Cost (LP/LC) were installed against a target of 18 and 28 Self Help sites were upgraded against the same target.

In spite of specific and sometimes severe incidents of emergency downtimes, network qualities of service targets through network performance at customer SLA were exceeded across the board.

The BEE target of 50% was also exceeded by 6% attaining 56% of total infrastructure spent on BEE level 4 and above. SENTECH now has a BBBEE rating of Level 4, with 65 points.

A target of 1% was met with regards to the percentage of total infrastructure spent on Qualifying SMMEs and Exempted Micro Enterprises as defined in the DTI Codes of Good Practice.

A new Comprehensive Enterprise Development Framework was developed.

Sentech s board of directors extends its sincere appreciation to the shareholder and the parliamentary portfolio on committee on communications for their oversight and guidance. The board further expresses its appreciation to the customers of the company for their continued support. Finally, the board extends its appreciation to the executive directors, senior management and staff of Sentech for their hard work.

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