By Adebisi Ademola
With the setback on its operation with the loss of N4.7 billion to the current foreign exchange crisis, PZ Cussons Nigeria Plc has announced its worst results in recent years, with N2.4 billion loss before tax in its first quarter unaudited financial statements for the period ended August 2016.
The consumer products group, in its unaudited financial statement filed to Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on Tuesday said its loss before tax dropped by 544.6 per cent from N546.8 million recorded in first quarter of 2015.
PZ Cussons Nigeria announced N1.59 billion loss after tax, 470.6 per cent below N472.9 million in prior quarter of 2015.
The unstable foreign exchange caused the company N4.7 billion in the period under review as against N14.97 million foreign exchange gain recorded in first quarter of 2015.
However, the company reported 12 per cent increase in revenue from N14.95 billion to N16.7 billion in first quarter of 2016.
Other indices show that the company’s basic earnings per share closed the period at a loss of N0.40 as against N0.11 kobo per share recorded in first quarter of 2015.
For the financial year ended May 31, 2016, the company had announced a decline of 4.9 per cent in revenue from N73.1 billion to N69.5 billion attributable to the adverse economic conditions.
Consequently, and largely due to an exchange loss of N2.9 billion, Group profit before taxation dropped by 52 per cent from N6.56 billion to N3.15 billion.
The Chairman, PZ Cussons Nigeria, Kolawole Jamodu, said the company is operating in a challenging operating environment, largely caused by the sharp decline in global oil prices.
He said, “These shocks manifested through various challenges including scarcity of foreign currency, price hikes and weakening consumer demand including down-trading. These, coupled with the disruptions in the Northern part of the country, particularly in the North East, impacted on the Company’s performance.”
Despite the deteriorating operating environment, he expressed that PZ Cussons Nigeria Plc remained focused to deliver a steady performance for the year to grow shareholder value.
He noted that, “To manage the impact of devaluation we ran a number of product optimisation initiatives to ensure the delivery of quality products at affordable prices and accelerated our Active Distributor Development program.
He express further that “Our brands remain strong and popular with consumers which leaves us well placed to hold our market position and exploit any emerging opportunities. The streamlined product portfolio will gives us the required focus and agility in the marketplace. We will continue to investing our supply chain processes to optimise operational efficiencies. The SAP implementation project that we launched to improve and strengthen our business processes and systems will also unlock efficiencies and improve decision making in our businesses. Additionally, along with these operational changes we are adapting our management structure to reflect a truly consumer-led organisation.
“The focus of our sales organisation is to deliver superior Route to Market(RTM) execution that grows our brands and delivers efficiencies to the business,” he added.
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