ZIMBABWE – Diversified conglomerate, Innscor Africa Limited (Innscor), says it will transfer assets valued at nearly $27 million into the group’s newly-unbundled Quick Service Restaurants (QSR) — Simbisa.

The group’s chief finance officer, John Koumides, told shareholders attending Innscor’s extra-ordinary general meeting (EGM) in the capital on Monday that Simbisa’s unbundling was part of a grand strategy to unlock shareholder value and increase revenue streams.

The EGM saw shareholders unanimously passing the ordinary resolutions to the effect that the Simbisa unbundling will be effected through a distribution of its entire issued share capital, being 541 593 440 ordinary shares to the shareholders of Innscor registered as such at the end of business day on October 30, 2015 through a dividend in specie of a 1:1 ratio.

Innscor chief executive Antonio Fourie said the unbundling will also see the diversified group acquiring additional manufacturing firms.

“One of the strategic objectives we set ourselves at the beginning of the last fiscal year was to say that we needed to look at the Innscor Africa Ltd portfolio and make sure it was configured to optimally generate the outcomes we need in terms of return on equity, return on investor capital, pre-cash flow,” he said.

Simbisa’s unbundling comes barely five years after the industrial holding company unbundled its crocodile farming business, Padenga Holdings. It was then listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange.

The Innscor boss noted that the group was crafting a mechanism to configure operations and unlock inefficiencies that sit in the group.

“Then the third thing we said we needed to do was unlock the value that was trapped because we had a conglomerate structure,” he said.

Fourie also revealed that the conglomerate was planning further unbundling, new acquisitions and at least a couple of disposals.

“From an acquisition point of view we still continue to look for acquisitions… you know we need to jump through all the regulatory hoops and make sure from a regulatory point of view we are doing things right and the process is right. But there are some interesting acquisition opportunities in the manufacturing space that we can take advantage of,” he said.

According to Fourie, there are parts of the Innscor portfolio “that would lend themselves to another unbundling”

However, he was quick to point out that these plans were yet to get the board and shareholder approvals.

As of August 31, the QSR business operated in 11 countries across Africa with 388 QSR outlets.

November 6, 2015; http://www.dailynews.co.zw/articles/2015/11/05/innscor-to-transfer-27m-assets