Africa-Press – Botswana. BBS Limited shares resumed trading on the Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE) last week following a publication of the citizen company’s unaudited financials for the year 2019.
The release of the 2019 preliminary financial statements saw the BBSL shares and BBS005 Bond resuming trading on Friday, with trading in the company’s securities open to all BBS security holders.
This is in exception of “BBS Key Persons”, who are directors and senior management, who will be allowed to trade following the publication of the audited financial statements, expected this Friday.
BBSL shares were suspended from trading on the BSE while the company attended to the audit gaps remediation.
The 2019 unaudited preliminary financial statements were initially due for release on March 31, 2020, but the timeline was not met as a result of post implementation challenges experienced with BBSL’s core banking system which was being upgraded at the time. “Given the complex nature of the upgrade, it took longer than expected to resolve the post implementation issues, including those that had an impact on the financial statements of the company,” a statement accompanying
the results noted.
Further, while addressing the post implementation issues, the Temenos T24 system experienced bugs which affected some accounts. During 2019, management performed an exercise to quantify the level of errors in the financial statements.
The exercise required extensive investigations and effort to ensure that significant matters were adequately addressed and to eliminate chances of inaccurate financial reporting. The corrections were effected during 2019.
The release of the 2019 unaudited BBS financials, depicts the company in a strong financial position. Total balance sheet for the year grew by 15% from P4.031 billion recorded in December 2018 to P4.626 billion as at end of December 2019, as mortgage loans rose from P3.197 billion to P3.401 billion, representing a six percent increase.
On the other hand, total savings also grew by a whooping 33%, from a balance of P2.170 billion, as at December 31, 2018, to P2.885 billion as at December, 31, 2019.
