- Misses deadline for 3 months
- Ram unsure of date of financials release
- Choppies contravenes listing rules
GAZETTE REPORTER
Botswana Stock Exchange Limited (BSEL) may soon be forced to delist the troubled retail behemoth, Choppies Enterprises Limited which has failed to release financial results for three full months now.
Under the captaincy of businessman, Ramachandran Ottapathu, Choppies was supposed to file its audited financial results in September, exactly three months back. The results are for the full year ending 30th June 2018. The financial results were supposed to have been filed on or before the 30th of September 2018. However, Choppies Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ramachandran Ottapathu announced on the BSEL then that the finalisation of these results was taking longer than had been anticipated.
“A number of matters requiring the attention of the board and management, which may materially impact on the results, are still being considered and the possible reporting impacts of these matters have not yet been finally and fully determined”, Choppies announced. The company announced that it will not publish the results for the year ended 30 June 2018 by the required deadline of 30 September 2018, and rather anticipated that it will publish them on or before the 15th October 2018.
However, Choppies has missed that deadline, and has not advanced reasons why it missed the deadline for the second time, hence a caution from both the BSE and the JSE. Thapelo Tsheole, CEO of the BSEL gave Choppies another extension of up to the end of November although shares listed on the BSE were suspended from trading.
When Choppies missed the end of October deadline, the chain supermarket group’s trading status on the BSE was annotated with ‘RE’ , to indicate that the company has failed to submit its financial results timeously and that the listing of the company shares on the BSEL is under threat of suspension and possible delisting.
The statement was released jointly through BSE sponsoring broker African Alliance Botswana Limited and JSE sponsor Rand Marchant Bank, a division of FirstRand bank Limited, the operators of FNB brand. In the statement, the brokers further revealed that consequently, the JSE, as the secondary exchange, will annotate Choppies’ listing on the JSE trading system with ‘RE’.
Choppies has once again failed to release the financial as at end of November 2018. Choppies issued a statement on the BSE saying that it is progressing matters raised before, which led to the delay of the financial results. However, the company did not reveal when exactly does it anticipate the release of the financials. Ram also does not know. He only said the matter is in the hands of auditors.