(adapted from Time cultivates winners. Senwes - a century of agriculture by Elize van Eeden)
A moment in History
After a small beginning of about 40 members, the number of members in 1931 stood on about 3 426, and from the forties, this number increased to over 14 000 by the 1985/86 financial year. Since then, circumstantial factors and new requirements have been put in place to ensure service rendering of the company with regard to granting credit to clients was not managed at a loss – as well as the transformation into a company in 1997 (with members then as shareholders) – caused the numbers to shrink to 3 482.
To become a member of the cooperation, the membership fee was 1 pound between 1909 and 1912, after which the amount was increased to 2 pounds on 1 September 1913. The annual joining and resignation of members were always determining factors with regard to the annual growth or decrease in the number of members. After 1937, shareholding in the company was on the foreground, and the value per share was calculated at one pound per share.
The share marketing function that Senwes performed was contracted out soon after 2003. From June 2004, the private client services of Barnard, Jacobs and Mellet were contracted to manage the share-marketing function in a wider market on behalf of Senwes. Regulatory constraints lead to the seizure of BJM’s function and so the share-marketing function yet again was assigned to Senwes.
In 2006, shares were sold at levels for about 300 cents. Owing to turn-around process (2001-2003), followed by the value development process for shareholders (2004-2009), the share price of Senwes increased from 30c in 2001 to constant levels above 500c and a climax of 650c by 2008. The weakest year of Senwes does not seem to be 2000, but mainly 2001 and 2002 due to the mentioned losses of the Senwes subsidiaries, write-offs on investments, provisions for non-recoverable debts and the selling of some diverse enterprises. The following profile shows an overview of the financial performance of Senwes from 1999 with regard to turnover profit, shareholders and share value and return, which looked particularly well in 2009.