Jens Montanana’s Datatec to pay shareholders $70 million in special dividend after Westcon loan repayment

South Africa-based multinational technology group Datatec has announced the payment of a special dividend worth $70 million (R1 billion) to shareholders at the close of the first-half-year period of its 2022 financial year, which ended on Aug. 30.

The special dividend will be paid from a cash consideration that the tech group received after Westcon International repaid an inter-company loan, in addition to its income reserve.

Datatec Founder and CEO Jens Montanana disclosed that the special dividend came off the back of the group’s healthy financial position during the period and the repayment of the loan.

Montanana said: “Datatec’s first half results were supported by excellent operational execution with all divisions delivering strong top and bottom-line growth as the positive impact of increased digitisation on recurring software and services continues.”

Datatec is a South Africa-based ICT solutions and services group operating in more than 50 countries across North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.

The group provides software services and cloud-computing solutions that include Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions, while its services offering spans ICT market integration and managed services, technology distribution and management consulting.

In the first half of its 2022 financial year, the group posted a profit of $324.2 million and a revenue of $2.26 billion, up 15 percent compared to the restated revenue of $1.96 billion that it reported during the same period last year.

Logicalis, Datatec’s largest contributor in terms of profitability, posted an 18.7-percent expansion in revenue to $822.9 million compared to $693.1 million in restated revenue for the same period last year.

All the group’s divisions delivered solid performances with strong revenue and bottomline growth, as no restructuring costs were incurred during the period.

The group’s operations in emerging markets such as Brazil and South Africa were impacted positively by local currencies strengthening in the first half of its 2022 financial year against the U.S. dollar, which increased their dollar-reported contribution to the results. The euro and pound also strengthened against the dollar during the period.