LAGOS, NIGERIA — Flour Mills of Nigeria PLC suffered a loss before taxes of N9.34 billion ($12.09 million) for the first quarter ended June 30, compared with net income of N5.8 billion ($7.5 million) during the same period a year ago.
Revenue was N456.38 billion, up from N339.6 billion in first quarter last year, and gross profits were N50.23 billion, up from N33.25 billion, the company said.
“FMN PLC has experienced continued strong revenue growth with the gross profit growing ahead of revenue,” the company said. “The operating profit dropped significantly due to foreign exchange loss of N22.5 billion in the last quarter leading to loss before tax of N9.3 billion. Without the devaluation of the exchange rate, the operating profit would have increased by 52%.”
The group’s Agro-Allied business segment showed revenue of N79.86 billion, up from N65.65 billion the previous year. Profit before tax for the segment, which includes livestock husbandry, production of livestock feeds, sale of fertilizer, edible oil, farming and other agro-allied activities, was N4.6 billion, up from N2.26 billion.
The Food segment, which involves flour milling, production of pasta and noodles, garnered N303.65 billion in revenue, a significant jump from N213.17 billion year-over-year, but the segment sustained a pretax loss of N11.47 billion, down from a profit of N4.57 billion.
“Management remains optimistic that with the current government monetary policies at stabilizing the FOREX market, and management continues effort in sales and marketing activities geared towards boosting our top line while keeping cost under control, we expect to see significant improvement in profit generation in the coming period,” FMN said.
