BNC in a fix over financials

Source: BNC in a fix over financials – NewsDay Zimbabwe

ZIMBABWE Stock Exchange (ZSE)-listed Bindura Nickel Corporation (BNC) is struggling to beat the target to publish its financial statements for the year ended March 30 2020, after shifting the date yet again, NewsDay Business has established.

BY FIDELITY MHLANGA

The mining company, which initially committed to the market to publish financials not later than June 30, 2020, failed to beat the deadline and notified shareholders that it was now releasing them before August 14, 2020.

The mining entity failed once again to publish on the aforementioned date and has now communicated that it will release the financials on September 18, 2020.

“On July 29, 2020, Bindura Nickel Corporation Limited (“BNC” or “the company”) published a notice in which shareholders and other stakeholders were informed that the company would not be able to meet its obligations in terms of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE’s) listing rules to publish its financial results for the year ended March 31, 2020 by not later than August 14, 2020,” company secretary Conrad Mukanganga said in a statement.

The local bourse granted the company a 30-day extension for the publication of its audited financial results for the year ended March 31, 2020 before further extending the deadline from July 31 to August 14, 2020.

“Subsequent to the foregoing, BNC realised that it would still not be able to meet the extended deadline of August 14, 2020. The company then approached the ZSE once again with an application for an extension by a further 30 days to enable it to publish the results by not later than 18th September 2020. The extension was granted. Accordingly, the company will no longer publish its results on or before August 14, 2020 as previously envisaged, but will now release them on or before 18th September 2020,” Mukanganga said
The company said it had failed to publish the results within the set timeframe due to the year-end audit which had been delayed by the lockdown which was imposed by authorities in March 2020 as a national response to curb the COVID-19 pandemic.

BNC said the revaluation of the BNC Smelter Complex by independent third parties could not be completed within the set year-end timelines.Last October, Sotic International, a company linked to businessman Kuda Tagwireyi snapped up ASA’s 74,13% stake from BNC.

Following the imposition of the lockdown a number of listed companies battled to beat an extended deadline of up to end of April to release their financial statements.
Subsequent to that, ZSE issued a blanket dispensation to all companies whose half-year and full-year financial statements were due for publication by March 31, 2020 on or before April 30, 2020 and most entities have since released their financials.

Zimbabwe has been under lockdown since March 30, 2020 and business has not been operating at optimum level.