Transol to raise additional capital

Story: Boahene Asamoah

TRANSACTION Solutions, an information, communications and technology firm listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange, has said it plans to source additional funds from the capital market to expand its operations.
Speaking at the Facts Behind the Figures programme of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) in Accra, the Chairman of the company, Mr Paul Jacquaye, said the company planned to deploy 300 additional automatic teller machines (ATMs) throughout the country. The company presently has 42 ATMs across the country.
He said the company also planned to expand its operations by pursuing a policy that would ensure that banks out-sourced the operations of their ATMs to the company.
The company operates in three broad areas which are: the telecoms sector, where it operates electronic voucher recharge cards for MTN; the banking sector, where it operates the ATMs and Point of Sale (POS) deployment; and electronic inventory and hosting and the retailing section, where it operates the Ezi shop outlets at Shell shops and some supermarkets.
Mr Jacquaye said the company hoped to diversify its operations in the telecoms sector to leverage its experts to cover other networks as well in order not to be too dependent on one network.
He said the company’s market share in the telecoms sector had dropped from 12 per cent to 4.5 per cent as a result of MTN’s decision to appoint six more distributors, bringing the total number of distributors to 12.
The chairman said presently the company had added Ghana Telecom and Tigo to its list of clients while there were opportunities for adding new networks in the near future.
On the POS, Mr Jacquaye stated that the company also intended to take advantage of the introduction of the Biometric Smart Cards by deploying 5,000 POS in the country.
He said the company was currently in the process of preparing for the VISA and Mastercard third party processing status which would help the company to process the international card locally and attract banks in the country.
“We hope this will present us with opportunities to process transactions for issuers”, Mr Jacquaye stated.
He said the company hoped to expand its Ezi shop concept to cover travelling and ticketing as well as embark on franchising of its brand.
“The Ezi Travel is a new business to leverage on Ezi Shop“, he stated.
Touching on its financials, the chairman said the company projects a net profit of GH¢540.86 million from the loss it recorded in 2007.
He said assets grew buy 104 per cent on account of its ATM expansion works from GH¢932.36 million to GH¢1,905.38 million and projected 23.66 per cent increase to GH¢2.4 billion
He said “ our growth strategies will be to look at possible mergers and acquisitions, raise additional capital for expansion and expand retail presence”.
He said the company would also establish the Transol business model in neighbouring countries.