Reuters
By Aziz El Yaakoubi
Moroccan property developer Alliances Developpement posted a record net loss of 1.8 billion dirhams ($187 million) in 2015 due to a debt restructuring and the economic slowdown in the North African country, it said on Tuesday.
The company had delayed its results announcement by more than a month, saying it wanted time to refine its debt restructuring plan.
Alliances’ shares have tumbled more than 65 percent in the past 12 months on the Casablanca stock market and the company issued a profit warning last March, saying it would post a bigger loss for 2015 than previously expected.
Alliances’ debt reached 7.3 billion dirhams in 2015, down from 8.5 billion dirhams in 2014, Ahmed Ammor, managing director of Alliances Development, said on Tuesday.
“It (the loss) is exceptional, our restructuring plan aims to reduce debt to 3.5 billion dirhams and return to profit at the end of 2016,” he told Reuters by telephone. Consolidated revenues fell sharply to 944 million dirhams in 2015 from 2.9 billion dirhams in 2014, he said.
Morocco’s financial market watchdog AMMC suspended trading in the company’s shares on Tuesday pending the 2015 results announcement.
Three of the group’s subsidiaries EMT, EMT Batiments and EMT Routes were put into liquidation by Moroccan courts due to financial difficulties last year.
Ammor said losses related to the three companies were 568 million dirhams.
Moroccan tycoon Mohamed Alami Lazraq, who controls 56.3 percent of Alliances, has injected 300 million dirhams into the company to revive its cashflow, Ammor added.
Alliances has won contracts in Cameroon and Ivory Coast as it has been trying to offset the drop in revenues in its domestic market.
When Alliances sold 1 billion dirhams in maiden bonds last August, it said it expected to post a loss for 2015 of 226 million dirhams, but last March it said the loss would be bigger.
Alliances’s rival Addoha, Morocco’s biggest property developer by stock market value, posted an 18.6 percent drop in full-year net profit to 852.6 million dirhams, saying its margins at the high end of the property sector had been squeezed.
($1 = 9.6334 Moroccan dirham)
(Reporting By Aziz El Yaakoubi; Editing by Susan Fenton)
