As the only hotel trading on the Lusaka Securities Exchange (LuSE), Taj Pamodzi hotel Board of Directors has, in a bid to ensure its shareholders are well up-to-date with the current and expected financial position of the hotel, published its trading statement. The Trading Statement issued on 6th January 2021, was an act done in accordance with the Securities Exchange Listings Requirements.
Coming from a year that proved challenging for business where the hotel posted losses after tax amounting to K4.4M, going into a year where businesses were completely ravaged and most of them brought to their knees, it is only right that shareholders are aware of how their company is performing before its financial year is concluded in March 2021.
The issued Trading Statement contained information from the board of directors advising shareholders of the company that Earnings per Share (EPS) for the interim financials for the half-year ended 30 September 2020 are expected to be lower than the EPS of the interim financials for the half year ended 30 September 2019 by 2400%. This should in no way come as a surprise especially to most business analysts. Seeing that this is a company in the hospitality industry and putting into consideration how Covid-19 prompted lockdowns in many countries, it should be expected that losses will be made from the year 2020. Hotel business goes hand in hand with tourism and looking at how the tourism sector suffered due to lack of tourists in the year 2020, most hotels had to shutdown operations for a period of time. Pamodzi hotel had to shutdown operations temporarily from April 2020 to September 2020. As the trading statements describes the effect of the closure, “ this resulted in no revenue being earned on room income and food and beverages income during the half year period ended 30 September 2020.”
Keeping in mind that the information contained in the Trading Statement had not been reviewed and or reported on by external auditors of the company by the date of the publicaction, the Board of Directors of Pamodzi Hotels Plc, closed it by advising the shareholders to excercise caution when dealing in company’s Securities until publication of the results.
Even though the the results of the full financial year are yet to be published as the year will only be concluded in March 2021, it is very unlikely that the company will be able to do better than the financial year eneded March 2020 where the loss stood at K4.4M. With regards to Covid-19, the effects are likely to be felt a bit longer especially if the found vaccine takes longer to reach Zambia.