DUBAI

Daman Investments expects to swing into profit this fiscal year ending March 31, 2017, after registering a loss in the previous year, even as the asset manager seeks to diversify income “to maintain companies performance at a steady rate,” a top executive said on Monday.

“With one more quarter to go in this financial year, we will end on a profitable front,” Ahmad Khizer Khan, chief executive officer of Daman Investments told Gulf News on sidelines of a press conference in Dubai.

Contribution from its fee-based advisory services is increasing at a faster pace compared to brokerage or asset management business. And with the consolidation happening in the economy, the company sees a gap that has been created to provide mergers and acquisitions services to small businesses.

Daman Investments derived 50 per cent of the revenues from fees income from advisory business, and the rest of the 50 per cent came from brokerage and asset management.

“We are targeting to get equal income from each business, that means a third from each businesses,” Khan said. “We have taken advantage in two ways: one we positioned ourselves well to take advantage of the rallies that took place, and we diversified our revenue stream, so we were less dependent on market volatility, but more dependent on fee based income, and that has increased substantially.”

Daman Investments wants to diversify its income and ensure that “we have a smooth income coming in in terms of fees to ride the ups and down,” Khan said.

The company has done a number of deals locally and advised on fund raising, restructuring for various companies, or even advising companies on mergers and acquisitions.

“On brokerage business going forward. I want lesser dependency, so if there is not much growth, so at least you have advisory, so that your overall firm’s income is not impacted,” Khan said.

On plans to launch an Initial Public Offering, Khan said they are well capitalised.

“We don’t have a need per se. We wanted to be in a position to raise capital in terms of going public. We are not in a position where we have to go public and we are looking at things more opportunistically, when the valuations are right,” Khan said.

Daman Investments had announced plans to sell 55 per cent stake in November 2014.