Corporate results: Maple Leaf Cement announces higher profit

Earnings per share increases to Rs2.81 during 1HFY14.

KARACHI:

Maple Leaf Cement has announced a profit after tax of Rs1.48 billion in the first half of fiscal year 2014 (1HFY14) ended on December 31, 2013, up 10% against a profit of Rs1.35 billion in the same period of the previous year.

Earnings per share (EPS) of the company increased to Rs2.81 compared to Rs2.56 in the same period of the previous year.

The company’s revenues increased to Rs8.84 billion, up 8% year-on-year (YoY) in 1HFY14 owing to the increase in the cement prices that jumped by around 11% during the period.

On the other hand, cost of sales also increased by 8% YoY. Consequently, Maple Cement’s gross margin stayed flat at 34% in 1HFY14.

JS Research reported on Monday that the Maple Leaf’s result is in line with its EPS estimate of Rs2.74.

Moreover, decline in financial charges (-8% YoY) also boosted the bottom-line growth in the period under review.

In 2QFY14, the company reported EPS of Rs1.76 as against Rs1.86 in the same period last year, down 5%. However, in comparison with 1QFY14, this is up 68% primarily due to 12% higher dispatches. Other important highlights of the result were 3 percentage points (ppts) jump in gross margin and 20% decline in the financial charges.

In the last fiscal year (FY13), Maple Leaf Cement recorded an abnormally high profit of Rs3.23 billion, up 550% compared to Rs496 million in FY12.

Maple Leaf – the third largest cement factory of Pakistan – is one of the companies of Kohinoor Maple Leaf Group, formed as a result of the trifurcation of the Saigon group of companies. In 1992, the company’s ownership was taken by the Kohinoor group under the government of Pakistan’s privatisation policy.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 25^th, 2014.

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