TransCentury Shareholders Approve Investment in Civicon

TransCentury Ltd., a Kenyan investor in infrastructure projects, said shareholders approved an investment in Civicon Ltd.

Shareholders voted in a meeting yesterday to approve a transaction that will leave TransCentury with a controlling stake in Civicon, a civil and mechanical engineering company with operations in five East African nations, Yida Kemoli, TransCentury’s head of corporate finance and strategy, said in a phone interview today. He declined to give the value of the acquisition pending regulatory approvals.

TransCentury owns 34 percent of Rift Valley Railways, the operator of the Kenya-Uganda railway line, and also makes power lines through units including South Africa’s Kewberg Cables and East African Cables Ltd. (EACL), the region’s biggest cable manufacturer. A transformer factory in Tanzania makes switch gears used in power facilities.

TransCentury’s shares rose 1.9 percent to 28.50 shillings at the 3 p.m. close in Nairobi. The stock had plunged 53 percent, almost triple the drop on the benchmark index, since it started trading in July. The company reported a profit of 468.3 million shillings ($5.2 million) in 2010, double the year- earlier figure, as revenue rose 26 percent.

The acquisition of Civicon will have an “impact” on TransCentury’s profit, though whether it will be reflected in this year’s financials depends on whether the transaction is completed this month, Kemoli said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eric Ombok in Nairobi at eombok@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Shaji Mathew at shajimathew@bloomberg.net