Improved profitability yielded operating profit of N$31.9 million, an increase of 31.3%. Headline earnings per share increased by 26.3% to 1.16 cents per share from 0.95 cents in the comparable period.
The group said since the merger of AST and Gijima in May 2005, integration benefits have been realised through successive interventions. In the year following the merger, the software and professional services businesses were put together operationally and duplicate management layers were eliminated with sustainable efficiencies and long term cost savings.
Integration of the infrastructure services business units was catalysed by the acquisition of Absa’s 30% minority holding in AST Distributed Technology Services (DTS) in September 2006.
During the six months, the group also followed through with the company realignment, cementing the client centric structure and culture throughout to enhance services rendered to clients.
In addition, all businesses were migrated onto a single consolidated enterprise resource planning financial system to introduce further long term efficiencies.