Qalaa Holdings (formerly Citadel Capital) has released its consolidated financial results, for the period ending March, 31 2015, reporting revenues of $253.6m, up 42.5% from the same period last year.

The investment company saw profit before tax grow to $35.91m, an eight-fold increase from Q1 2014 profit before tax of $3.78m.

Ahmed Heikal, Chairman and Founder of Qalaa Holdings, said: “2015 is off to a good start for Qalaa as the strategic transformation and operational improvements undertaken in 2014 continue to be positively reflected in the company’s financial performance.”

“We are now on-track to meet our previously stated profitability of over $150m by the end of 2015 on the back of asset sales, disposal of discontinued operations, and a decline in interest expenses as we push through with our ongoing deleveraging program,” he said.

Qalaa Holdings recorded a 51.6% decrease in net loss after tax to $14.61m Q1 2015, compared to the $30.19m recorded in the same period 2014.

The improvement in net loss recorded was despite the impact of devaluation of the Egyptian Pound against the US dollar during the same period which led to the local currency depreciating by 6.7% and contributed an additional $6.90m in foreign exchange charges to the investment company’s expenses along with a significant inflation on the interest expenses to company’s dollar denominated debt.

As part of its growth strategy, Qalaa Holdings is making progress towards the start of operations at greenfield Egyptian Refining Company (ERC), a $3.7bn refinery and one of Africa’s largest project finance deals, and capital raising for Mashreq.

ERC and Mashreq coming online are expected to significantly improve the firm’s top line growth and sustain bottom line profitability.

The Qalaa Holdings management reiterates its strategy going into 2015 of mitigating financial risk by significantly deleveraging the investment company at Holding and platform company levels, while limiting operational risk through the divestment of non-core and non-essential assets.

Qalaa will instead focus its resources on core businesses and ensure they have the funding needed to deliver on growth plans.

Hisham El-Khazindar, Qalaa Co-Founder and Managing Director, said: “Our strategy for 2015 will allow us to drive growth at current assets and increase our ownership without resorting to additional capital increases beyond the current (ongoing) capital increase to $1.2bn.”

“Proceeds from the ongoing exits will be utilized to deleverage by reducing total consolidated debt of some $967.5m — excluding debt associated with its Greenfield megaproject Egyptian Refining Company and Africa Railways — to below $651m by the end of FY15,” he said.