Lucky Cement reports profit of Rs11.33 billion for FY19

Board proposes final payout of Rs6.5 per share

KARACHI: Lucky Cement reported after-tax profit of Rs11.33 billion after taking out Rs1.02 billion attributable to non-controlling interests for fiscal year ended June 30, 2019, which translated into earnings per share (EPS) of Rs35.03 compared to Rs45.83 reported last year.

The board of directors of the company proposed a final cash dividend of Rs6.50 per share subject to approval of shareholders in the upcoming annual general meeting scheduled to be held on September 27, 2019.

On a consolidated basis, the company achieved gross turnover of Rs136.59 billion, which was 9.6% higher as compared to last year’s turnover of Rs124.68 billion.

On a standalone basis, the company’s overall sales volume declined by 1.8% to 7.67 million tons in FY19.

Local cement sales registered a decline of 11.7% to 5.85 million tons in FY19 compared to 6.63 million tons last year. Meanwhile, exports of the company improved 60.9% to reach 1.82 million tons as compared to 1.13 million tons last year.

In terms of the company’s standalone financial performance, the gross sales revenue increased 0.3% to Rs67.55 billion compared to Rs67.38 billion reported last year. The increase in revenue was mainly due to higher export volumes for clinker.

Lucky Cement recorded a net profit of Rs10.49 billion, which was 14% lower as compared to last year. Similarly, the standalone earnings per share of the company was Rs32.44 compared to last year’s EPS of Rs37.72 per share.

Lucky Cement, in a statement, shared progress on its brownfield expansion for cement production of 2.6 million tons per annum at its Pezu plant and the offshore Greenfield investment project for producing 1.2 million tons of clinker at Samawah, Iraq.

The company also shared the commencement of completely knocked down (CKD) operations of Kia Lucky Motors with the booking of Sportage variant from June 30, 2019 followed by Picanto in August 2019.

In addition to that, the company also reported progress on its 660-megawatt supercritical coal-based power project at Port Qasim.

“With the current economic challenges and post-International Monetary Fund (IMF) macroeconomic situation, Lucky Cement believes that in short to medium-term, the outlook of the cement industry will continue to remain challenging for domestic sales,” said a company official.

“Exports are anticipated to remain stable, however, prices will come under pressure due to regional competition,” he added.

In the long term, according to the official, Lucky Cement believes that the cement industry’s outlook is promising on account of government’s key initiatives to build both small and mega-capacity/multipurpose water reservoirs and dams, and construct low-cost affordable houses for the public at large.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 30^th, 2019.

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