According to Reuters, TransCentury has reported a 38 percent jump in pre-tax profit in 2011 from a year earlier to 869.3 million shillings ($10.5 million).
Created by group of leading Kenyan professionals and investors who wants to maximize the unexploited investment opportunities in Africa, TransCentury Limited (TCL) is a principal investment powerhouse. Located in Nairobi, Kenya, the company specializes in investing in private companies across the continent.
TransCentury has interest in diverse sector like agriculture, energy, food, real estate sector, private equity and venture capital funds. The company invests as a partner in green fields and existing property ventures while seeking board representation by offering financial, technical and management capacity into its portfolio companies.
Today, TransCentury’s tentacles has spread across South Africa and East Africa countries like Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe as the company acquires and control stakes in public quoted companies.
In April 2009, the company’s share was made available to qualified investors in an over the counter exchange, hence, TransCentury is a publicly listed company on the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE).
Since the inception of the company in 1997, the company has acquired a firm grip of major firms in their area of specialty and has since grown remarkably till date. For example, with its Midas touch, when the group took over the major shares of the East Africa Cables from Sameer Group in 2004, the cable company was able to recover its loss by posting a 172.3 million (Profit After Tax) as opposed to the former 57 million losses.
While the total asset of the company stood at Kshs.15.3 billion with a posted Kshs.54 million Profit After Tax (PAT) as at June 2011, TransCentury has a listed share of 267,038,090 and 6,912,194 shares under the Convertible Bond Programme (CBP), making it a total of 273,950,284 listed shares.
So far, the company portfolio include stakes in various companies like Cableres du Congo- 100% ownership since 2010; Chai Bora a market leading tea product that controls 60% of the market; East African Cables (63% stake), Kewberg cables (100% ownership since 2007) and Tanelec Limited, Tanzania – a transformer manufacturing company with 70% stake since 2007. apart from this, the company also have major shares in Avery East Africa that supply power generating equipment, Civicon Group Limited and its subsidiaries ( involves in project that deal with road building ,steel erection, piping, heavy transport across Africa and East Africa), 34% ownership of Rift Valley Railways Investments (RVRI)- a railway company with service in Kenya and Uganda and a 10.7% shares in Development Bank of Kenya. It also has multi-manager investment (fund of funds) in Aureos capital Limited, Helios Investment Partners, and Business Partners International).
In the real estate scene, TCL is planning to broaden its horizon by developing its 6-acre plot in Karen to a 24,000 square meters lifestyle mall with commercial office space.
Sitting at the top of this dignified private equity firm is Dr. Gachao Kiuna, the CEO of the TransCentury group. At 35, he was recently tagged among the most powerful men under 40 in Africa by Forbes magazine. Kiuna bagged his PhD at the age of 24 from Cambridge and has gone to work for Mckinsey & company in Johannesburg where he emerged as a major consultant to the government of Kenya on the ‘Vision 2030’ project.
Kiuna once explained the group’s vision in an interview, saying, ‘we are seeing the revolution that happened in the telecoms now taking place in the power sector, which has huge latent demand.’ He also said that ‘there is huge potential to unlock incredible growth by mordernising domestic sectors which are currently inefficient and underserved.’
With its corporate intelligence and impressive portfolio, the company aspires to continue improving its standard as sub- Saharan Africa’s foremost investment group.
“People can see our results and this is the most important factor in any market. By turning around companies in high growth sectors, we not only make high returns but also contribute significantly to the economic development of this continent”, says Kiuna.
