The company sustained a loss of $1.29 million in the second quarter of 2017 compared to a loss of $1.34 million in the same period last year.
Revenue for the second quarter ended June 30 was $3.1 million, which compared with $3.2 million in the same period last year. Animal Nutrition product revenue increased 17% over prior year levels driven by the supply and cooperation agreement with Kentucky Equine Research (KER). Food product revenue decreased 13% quarter-over-quarter, which the company attributed to decreased buying from one of its largest contract manufacturing accounts.
“Our second-quarter results continue to demonstrate the substantial progress we are making with our strategic initiatives to reduce costs, strengthen our balance sheet and focus the company's efforts on our core ingredient business,” said Robert Smith, chief executive officer. “With the sale of Healthy Natural, we now have the cash and additional financial flexibility to fuel our strategic growth plans. As we move through the second half of 2017, we are now fully focused on generating revenue growth and capitalizing on the substantial value of our proprietary technology for the benefit of our stockholders.”
RiceBran Technologies noted that both Healthy Natural and Nutra, SA are presented as discontinued operations in the financial statements.
The company said its plans to divest its investment in Nutra, SA, the Brazilian parent company of its Irgovel operations, in order to focus solely on its U.S.-based ingredients business, met the criteria for presentation as discontinued operations. The company continues to explore divestiture options for its investment in Nutra, SA.
The company expects further significant improvement in its balance sheet resulting from the $18.3 million sale of its Healthy Natural subsidiary to be reflected in the third quarter of 2017.
“We have made significant strides in improving shareholder equity and liquidity in order to position RBT for future success,” said Brent Rystrom, chief financial officer. “In addition to the substantial reductions we have made to our cost structure, the sale of Healthy Natural has enabled us to repay all of our recourse debt and eliminate all associated interest expense moving forward. As a result, we enter the second half of 2017 with a much stronger balance sheet and sufficient working capital to move forward with our aggressive long-term growth plans to deliver substantial value for our stockholders.”
