Transaction Capital, owner of WeBuyCars and SA Taxi, will swing to a headline loss of more than R700m in the year to end-September and has stopped financing new taxis.
The losses are down from a R1.6bn profit in the 2022 financial year.
Headline earnings per share (HEPS), which strip out one-off costs such as writedowns, will drop between 92.5c and 103.3c from 224.4c in the previous comparable period.
The company announced in March that the taxi industry could not repay their vehicle finance loans as taxi fares had not increased much while the price of petrol and interest rates had skyrocketed.
SA Taxi, which is owned more than R17bn by taxis, is still being restructured and has completely stopped financing new taxis. It is financing only second-hand taxis, the company said on Wednesday evening.
SA Taxi used to repossess taxis for nonpayment and then refurbish and resell them, but it now repossesses more taxis than it can resell, weakening its business model.
It has impaired its stock of repossessed vehicles after write-offs earlier in the year. Including the new writedowns in year-end results means an overall loss of R1.6bn.
SA Taxi, rebranded Mobalyz, has not yet secured new debt from development finance institutions and banks after April. However, it needs the new debt to continue financing taxis in order to sustain the division.
Second-hand car dealer WeBuyCars is now the biggest part of the business. It had a weak first half, though its second half beat expectations.
Transaction Capital will release its full-year results December 5.
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