Goddy Egene
Tripple Gee & Company Plc, a security documents and financial instruments printing firm listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) Tuesday reported a growth of 129 per cent in profit after tax(PAT) for the year ended March 31, 2018. The audited results showed that the company posted a revenue of N742.56 million in 2018, up 23 per cent from N601.72 million in 2017. Cost of sale rose from N428 million to N545 million, while gross profit stood at N197.531 million, compared with N173 million in 2017. The high cost of doing business in the country due to poor infrastructure pushed the company’s distribution and administrative expenses to N145.92 million from N123.92 million the previous year.
However, the company was able to reduce its cost of finance from N34 million to N14.8 million. Consequently, it ended the year with a profit before tax of N37.804 million, up from N15.589 million, while PAT jumped from N10.239 million to N23.450 million. The board of directors has recommended a dividend of N14.8 million for the shareholders, which translates into three kobo per share.
Tripple Gee is the only Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s licensed security documents firm listed on the NSE. The Executive Vice Chairman of the company, Chief Gbade Giwa recently assured stakeholders of better days ahead, saying the initiatives embarked upon which were already yielding results, would propel the firm to greater heights. One of the initiatives is the introduction of an anti-identity theft product after 12 years of development. The product is called tru-DATA.
According to Giwa, what tru-DATA does is that it encrypts the true information on the instrument or those it intends to carry particularly the critical ones.
“What Tripple Gee has done is to take the important data in the documents which are often subjects of attacks to higher level by encrypting this critical data on the sensitive documents. Such that if Mr. A. steals or fraudulently attacks the document of Mr. B, which is encrypted with tru-DATA software, Mr. A will be shamed at the point he wants to take value, when the encryption is now decrypted by tru-DATA, which will clearly show the face of Mr. B. In other words, if all issuers of sensitive documents such as universities, tertiary institutions, NYSC, or even national identity cards are encrypted with tru-DATA software, it will be impossible for identity thieves to get value as the true owners of the instrument will be revealed on the spot,†he said.
