Accelerate: Headline earnings to top profit outlook

The listed property fund, Accelerate, whose non-executive chairman is former Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni, expected its headline earnings a share for the year to March to be much higher that its profit forecast, it said on Friday. However, it said distributions a share would remain largely unchanged from its previously published forecast of R13.92 for the four months to March. It said headline earnings a share were expected to be between 165 percent and 175 percent higher than the profit forecast for the four months to March of 18.83c. The fund attributed this increase to the fact that the number of shares used to calculated headline earnings a share in the profit forecast was not weighted because it was for a four-month period while the number of shares in issue used to calculate headline earnings for the year to March was weighted from the date of the listing. Earnings a share for the same period is expected to be between 690 percent and 700 percent higher compared to the forecast of R36.02. Accelerate was listed on the main board of the JSE in December. Its initial portfolio of 51 properties on listing was independently valued at more than R5.9 billion. Shares rose 4 percent to close at R5.20 on Friday. – Roy Cokayne