Cable and Wireless Jamaica Limited, most commonly known as FLOW, recently announced that they have accumulated a tax cushion of $44.8 billion, as a result of tax losses the company incurred over a number of years. FLOW has been operating at a loss for years due to a debt of $60 million owed to parent company Cable and Wireless Communications and a consistent reduction in the value of assets, among other reasons.
Despite all this bad news, something positive came about. Based on the tax losses of $44.8 billion, the company is able to offset against any future profit, once the Tax Commissioner and the Tax Administration of Jamaica decides how it should be used.
Furthermore to the tax loss announcement, FLOW released its 2017 financial report. In 2017, they made an operating profit of $5.02 billion, however, it had to pay $5 billion owed to CWC Entities for debt financing charges. While a net loss of $383 million made the $261 million profit the company made in 2016 insignificant, FLOW managed to increase its revenue by 8 percent to $27 billion compared to $25 billion in 2016.
Additionally, with thousands of new customers under its belt, FLOW announced an 11 percent revenue growth for broadband services and 18 percent for mobile services.
Unfortunately, the 2017 financial report can be the last publicly released by FLOW, if the stock is delisted due to acquisition of majority of shares by CWC Cala Holdings. In the meantime, trading of CWJ stock on the JSE has been suspended until March 22, 2018 and will resume trading on March 23, 2018.
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