Riyadh – Mubasher: Almarai Company on Sunday announced a year-on-year profit increase of 4.88% in the first three months of 2018.
The food and beverage firm logged SAR 344 million ($91.73 million) in profits between January and March 2018, a rise from SAR 328 million ($87.47 million) in the same period of 2017.
Quarter-on-quarter, the company’s profits dropped 32.94% from SAR 513 million, according to a filing to the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul).
Almarai’s gross profit grew 6.46% to SAR 1.253 billion in Q1-18 from SAR 1.177 billion in the corresponding period of 2017, while operating profits increased 14.25% to SAR 481 million from SAR 421 million.
Earnings per share (EPS) amounted to SAR 0.33 in Q1-18 versus SAR 0.31 in Q1-17, the company added.
Total equity attributable to shareholders as at 31 March 2018 amounted to SAR 13.114 billion, up 19.2% from SAR 11.006 billion as at 31 March 2017, Almarai stated, noting that the book value of its share as of 31 March 2018 reached SAR 13.1.
Saudi-based Almarai attributed its profit rise to “continual improvement in [the] poultry segment, turnaround of [the] infant nutrition segment, improved performance of arable operations in Fondomote North and South America and the cost rationalisation efforts put in place by the management to offset a challenging market environment within the GCC.”
The company’s top challenges in Q1-18, however, included the introduction of the value-added tax (VAT) added to other structural economic changes including expatriate levy and a reduction in the market size within the GCC, the statement indicated.
The Saudi food firm logged a 4.5% year-on-year decline in revenues to SAR 3.232 billion in Q1-18 from SAR 3.384 billion, citing lower exports.
“Despite operating in a higher cost environment, Almarai has protected its business against margin erosion through managing cost and innovation-led product offerings for the quarter across many categories, resulting in an improvement of gross margin from 34.8% to 38.8% [in Q1-18], the company highlighted.
It added that stable commodity prices and higher receipts of subsidy payments also backed margin improvement.
Almarai had previously posted SAR 2.18 billion in profits for the full-year 2017, up 1.58% from SAR 2.15 billion achieved in the previous year.
