Steinhoff’s long-awaited interim results may appear on Friday

Steinhoff International’s long-delayed interim results for the six months to end-September 2017 may finally be revealed on Friday.

“The group is in the process of completing its reporting for the first half of the 2018 financial year and will publish the unaudited consolidated interim results on June 29,” Steinhoff said in an update on May 18.

Steinhoff said it expected to report that its interim revenue grew about 1% to €9.4bn.

It warned shareholders it expected to post a loss “after taking into account central costs, depreciation, advisory fees (relating to restructuring, liquidity, litigation and investigation in the first half of the 2018 financial year), foreign exchange losses on cross-currency loans, impairments, capital losses suffered on asset disposals to generate liquidity and increased interest costs (both from increased interest rates and higher commitment fees on new facilities)”.

As the last trading day of June, Friday is likely to see a rush of tardily managed companies either getting their March results out before the JSE censures them for missing its three months deadline, or issuing “the dog ate my financial statements” excuses.

Friday is also deadline day for a number of companies with February reporting periods which were given an additional month by the JSE before facing suspension.

It is also a busy day on the economics front. The Reserve Bank is scheduled to release May’s money supply figures at 8am, and the South African Revenue Service (SARS) is scheduled to release May’s trade balance figures at 2pm.

The economists’ consensus, according to Trading Economics, is that SA’s surplus will widen to about R6bn from April’s R1.14bn. SARS tends to revise the previous month’s figure in each trade report.

After nearly going over R14 to the dollar on Thursday, the rand was back down to R13.71 to the dollar, R15.97 to the euro and R17.99 per pound at 6.20am on Friday.

Asian markets trading ahead of the JSE’s opening were generally up, indicating the local bourse may end the week with a third trading day of gains.