By Hamisu B. S
Flour mills of Nigeria Plc. is Nigeria’s leading integrated food and agro-allied group listed on the Nigeria Stock Exchange. Flour mills released the financial statement for the year ended March 31, 2019.
Revenue has declined by 2.82% from N542 billion in the year ended March 2018 to N527 billion in the year ended March 31, 2019. Further analysis of the revenue segments of the company shows that sales in the food segment decrease from N345, 701,240,000 in 2018 to N335, 614,122,000 in the year ended March 2019. Revenue from Agro-allied segment decrease from 90,685,960,000 to 88,100,141,000. Sugar segment revenue decreased from N86, 188,397,000, to 82,691,203,000. While services segment revenue decreased marginally from 20,096,812,000 to 20,999,101,000.
Deleveraging of the balance sheet continues in the period as the total net debt reduced by 21.2 billion, this has translated in a 30% reduction in the cost of financing to 22.9 billion for the year ended March 31, 2019, compared to 32.6 billion in 2018.
Selling and distribution expenses increased from 6.1 billion in 2018 to 8.1 billion in the year ended March 31, 2019. Administrative expenses have increased marginally from 19.423 billion in 2018 to 19.424 billion in 2019. Employee cost has increased from 20.715 billion in 2018 to 25.362 billion in the year ended March 31, 2019.
Profit before tax has decreased to N10.2 billion in 2019 compared to 16.5 billion in the year ended March 2018.
Profit after tax has decreased to N4 billion in the year ended March 2019 compared to 13.6 billion in 2018. Earnings per share stood at 100 kobos compared to 483 kobos in 2018.
The Board is proposing a dividend of N1.20 subject to shareholders’ approval.
Commenting on the result, Anders Kristiansson, Group chief finance officer said: Our strategy to restructure the balance sheet base and optimize the financing cost has started to yield the desired result, as the business showed increased level of efficiency, despite ongoing pressure on consumer disposable income in many of our target categories, we continued delivered a stronger quarter 4 than last year.
