Cape Town – Blue Label Telecoms, which this week signed a binding agreement in its bid to buy a 45 percent stake in Cell C, on Tuesday reported a 54 percent increase in headline earnings per share in the six months to the end of November.Blue Label on Monday said a “binding umbrella restructure agreement” had been reached with South Africa’s third largest mobile operator, its debt providers and a third party investor to reduce the maximum net borrowings of Cell C to R6 billion.
The unnamed third party investor would take 15 percent of the share capital of Cell C for R2 billion, with Blue Label’s subscription for 45 percent of the share capital of Cell C remaining unchanged.
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Blue Label on Tuesday reported a 25 percent increase in gross profit to R1.1 billion on revenue growth of 3 percent in the six months under review.
Reporting the results, the company pointed to organic growth in local operations as well as the impact of a fair value gain on its investment in Oxigen Services India because of an accounting change.