Goddy Egene
The Chief Executive Officer, Ardova Plc, Olumide Adeosun, has said the company remains committed to delivering improved profitability and value for shareholders in 2020 and beyond. Adeosun stated this while addressing shareholders at the 41st annual general meeting (AGM), held virtually in Lagos last week.
According to him, following the entry of the new management in 2019, their vision was to create an energy firm that will become the brand of choice for consumers.
“Our strategy to deliver on this goal is to be laser-focused in increasing operational efficiency and leveraging our core assets to maximise growth.
“On this premise, we divested from our non-core subsidiaries, a strategic move that quickly resulted in a cleaner balance sheet and a healthy platform from which our resulting growth stems. It is against this backdrop that we delivered a 31 per cent year-on-year growth in revenue and a 520 per cent year-on-year growth in profitability,” he said.
He said their 2019 financial results mark the start of their repositioning plan, adding:” We will continue to be deliberate about building an energy company designed for the future, and our performance over the latter half of 2019 shows that moving forward on this course will set us on the right path to our long-term goals.
In his address to the shareholders, Chairman of Ardova Plc, Abdul Wasiu Sowami, said the change in strategy introduced by the new management had begun to yield returns.
He explained that despite what was a challenging economic environment, the evolution of their business model to one focused on improving operational efficiencies, leveraging existing core assets and positioning the company to be at the forefront of renewable energy distribution in Nigeria has led to significant improvement in our top and bottom-line.
“We will continue to focus on delivering value to our shareholders as we continue to drive the growth and profitability of our business,” he said.
According to Sowami, key highlights for 2019 financial year indicates an increase in shareholders’ funds by 15.6 per cent year-on-year, to N17.5 billion compared with N15.1 billion in 2018 as a result of a 38 per cent growth in retained earnings.
“The company also improved its operational efficiency and increased its volumes and margins for all its products, resulting in total volume growth of 37.4 per cent from N804.7million in 2018 to N1.1 billion in 2019,” he said.
