Balance Sheet
Total assets as at 31 December 2008 were Rs. 81.97 billion, as against Rs. 78.90 billion the previous year primarily due to an increase of Rs. 2.95 billion in Current Assets.
Total equity increased by Rs. 4.85 billion to Rs. 49.34 billion. As the US$ 100 million bond becomes payable in 2009 there has been a major shift from non-current liabilities to current liabilities. Current liabilities increased by Rs. 13.21 billion while non-current liabilities decreased by Rs. 13.49 billion.
Non-Current Assets
Total non-current assets of the Company increased marginally to Rs. 50.89 billion, as against Rs. 50.79 billion from the previous year. The decrease in property, plant & equipment of Rs. 2.86 billion was over and above the increase in subsidiaries amounting to Rs. 2.42 billion. The investments of Rs. 2.42 billion mentioned above related mainly to Rs. 2.10 billion investment in Mobitel and Rs. 0.10 billion and Rs. 0.17 billion investments made in SLT VisionCom (Pvt) Limited and Sky Network (Pvt) Limited respectively. The other notable factor was the increase in receivables by 23.9% to Rs. 1.57 billion.
Working Capital
Working Capital eroded significantly as at 31 December 2008 to Rs. 6.64 billion, a decrease of 60.7% over the previous year. The main contributory factor to the decrease was the US$ 100 million bond shifting from non-current liabilities to current liabilities as mentioned above. Increase in trade and other receivables of 7.1% to Rs. 10.78 billion and growth in cash and cash equivalents by 7.7% to Rs. 17.97 billion were the other notable factors. The Cash and cash equivalents includes a sinking fund of Rs. 9.96 billion created in 2005 to redeem the US$ 100 million bond in 2009.
Activity and Liquidity Ratios
Asset turnover decreased, from 0.47 in 2007 to 0.44 in 2008.
The current ratio decreased significantly from 2.32 in 2007 to 1.27 in the year under review. This is mainly on account of the increase in current liabilities as the US$ 100 million bond becomes payable in 2009. The quick asset ratio also decreased to 1.18 during 2008 as compared with 2.21 of the previous year.
Interest Cover
Interest cover showed a healthy increase to 8.30 in 2008 as against 6.96 in 2007. Contributory factors were 6.2% increase in Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT), and a decrease in interest expenses of 11.8%.
Capital Structure
The total assets of SLT, amounting to Rs. 81.97 billion, were funded by shareholders' funds (60%), long-term liabilities (10%) and short-term liabilities (30%).
Debt
The total debt of the Company was Rs. 13.83 billion as at balance sheet date, 4.8% higher than in 2007. This was due to an increase in short-term bank borrowings increasing by Rs. 0.90 billion. The Company’s overall debt comprises Rs. 0.68 billion long-term debt (4.9% of the total) and Rs. 13.15 billion (95.1%) short-term debt. 83.8% of the total debt consists of foreign-currency borrowings, while the balance 16.2% are local-currency borrowings.
Notes for US$ 100 million issued by the Company and redeemable in 2009 constitute 98.9% of the foreign-currency debt.
The Gearing ratio reduced marginally from 22.9% in 2007 to 21.9% in 2008.
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