Food Empire's Q1 net profit up 58.8%

FOOD Empire Holdings posted a net profit of US$6.31 million for its first quarter ended March 31, 2017, up 58.8 per cent from a year ago.

Revenue went up 23.6 per cent to US$62.44 million, thanks to sales in the group's largest market, Russia, increasing by 23 per cent to US$29.9 million. This was due to appreciation of the Russian rouble against the US dollar, as well as increased sales in their Kazakhstan and CIS markets by 141.6 per cent to US$9.2 million, mainly due to change in business model and reduction of price compensation to distributor in Kazakhstan coupled with aggressive promotion.

Earnings per share went up from 0.75 US cent one year ago to 1.18 US cents for Q1 2017. No dividend was declared for the quarter.

The group said that its upstream projects (non-dairy creamer plant and the instant coffee plant in India, as well as its snacks manufacturing facility in Malaysia) continue to gain growth momentum.

The group also plans to ramp up production scale to improve profitability. Besides organic growth, it intends to tap strategic mergers and acquisitions to expand further upstream and downstream as well as enter new markets.