South African tycoon Zak Calisto, the founder of Karooooo Limited, is set to receive a dividend of $17.3 million from his majority stake in Karooooo, a Singapore-based mobility platform.
Karooooo is the 100-percent owner of Cartrack, a company that provides real-time mobility data analytics solutions for smart transportation.
Karooooo reported robust results for its fourth quarter (Q4 2023) ended Feb. 28, 2023. For the full year (FY 2023), Karooooo’s total revenue grew 28 percent to $190 million (FY 2022: $148.9 million) and subscription revenue grew 17 percent to $163 million (FY 2022: $139 million).
Strong customer acquisition and disciplined capital allocation benefitted earnings per share, up 51 percent to $0.25 for Q4 2023 (Q4 2022: $0.17) and up 27 percent to $1.05 for FY 2023 (FY 2022: $0.83).
Free cash flow for FY 2023 rose 44 percent to a record $29 million (FY 2022: $20.55-million), while Cartrack’s operating profit margin expanded to 30 percent (FY 2022: 27 percent).
Based on the record earnings, healthy free cash flow generation and strong and unleveraged balance sheet, Karooooo declared a dividend of $0.085 per share to be paid on July 3, 2023.
Calisto, who founded Karooooo in 2001, initially focusing on stolen car recovery services in South Africa, owns a 66-percent stake in the company, which translates into 20,419,294 shares, hence the $17.3 million payment accruable to him.
Karooooo made its debut on Nasdaq on March 31, 2021, in an IPO that raised gross proceeds of $29.4 million from 1,050,000 ordinary shares at a price of $28 per share.
The Singapore-based mobility platform has recently evolved into a major international provider of smart transportation management and analytics, serving customers in 23 countries across five continents and supporting more than 1.4 million users worldwide.
