Companies

Mumias Sugar delays results by over 4 months

msc

The main gate of Mumias Sugar Company. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Mumias Sugar Company’s #ticker:MSC dismal record of missing regulatory timelines for releasing financial results has touched a new low after the firm missed Thursday’s deadline despite being a second extension for the year to June 2018 results.

Board chairman Kennedy Ngumbau Mulwa said Thursday that the company’s financials will now come out in two weeks’ time, being over four months late and beyond the February 28 deadline by the regulator.

“The report will now be released in the next two weeks. We have talked to the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) and we are in agreement. We worked out on an amicable contingency plan,” said the chairman in a phone interview.

The delay means the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) listed firm has left investors in the dark for 15 months since the last release of results in November 2017.

This has complicated AGM dates and Mumias’ auditing calendar given that half year results for the 2018/2019 financial results also ought to have come out Thursday, going by CMA guidelines.

Mumias is supposed to have released the June 2018 full year results by October last year and 2018/2019 half year results by Thursday.

CMA regulations require listed firms to prepare and publish their annual and interim financial statements in at least two newspapers of national circulation within four and two months of the close of the financial year respectively.

The miller's board missed the October 2018 deadline and applied for one month extension from CMA, a deadline that it also missed. It was then granted three more months to release the results. The second deadline lapsed Thursday.

Mumias linked the second delay to a November 9 government decision to set up a taskforce to review the policy, legal and regulatory framework of the sugar industry.

The taskforce’s schedule was however interrupted after farmers formed a parallel team. Dr Mulwa said that its findings and implications to the miller will now have to be shared with shareholders later.