PZ Cussons Nigeria Plc has ended the 2025/26 financial year with a bottom line of N49 billion, almost five times the preceding year’s profit figure of N10 billion.
With that, the company has broken free from negative equity holdings and recovered the ability to pay dividends to shareholders. Its retained loss position, which prevented dividend payments for the past three years, has now recovered.
Annual profit exceeded expectations, comfortably eliminating the company’s N39 billion accumulated losses from 2025.
The company’s yet-to-be-audited full-year financial report made up to May 2026 shows significantly improved earnings performance with cost savings that elevated its operational momentum through the year.
A stronger growth in sales than production cost provided a favourable environment for the company to raise gross margin with improved volume. Turnover expanded by 22.5 per cent to N260.5 billion in the year, while cost of sales grew less rapidly at 20.8 per cent to close at N187 billion.
The gain in gross margin enabled stronger growth in gross profit than sales at 27 percent to stand at over N73 billion at the end of the year.
Major upturns in two income lines elevated margins further and boosted operating results for the year. The first is a rebound from net foreign exchange losses of N7.8 billion in the preceding year to gains of N11.8 billion at the end of the 2026 financial year.
The second is a windfall from the sale of assets, which multiplied other income more than 22 times to roughly N40 billion.
The two major inflows absorbed strong increases in selling/distribution expenses and administrative costs, and still powered a big leap in operating profit for the year.
At N77 billion, operating profit jumped four times from under N19 billion recorded for the previous year. Operating profit margin widened from 8.9 per cent to 29.6 per cent over the year.
A third level step up came from a sharp drop in the cost of finance, which fell from N3.6 billion to N965 million over the financial year. The drop changed the reading of the company’s financing activities from net finance cost of N2.3 billion the previous year to a net finance income of N259 million.
The big cost saving from financing activities reflects management’s deleveraging of the company’s balance sheet, which slashed borrowings from over N71 billion at the end of the 2025 financial year to N5.9 billion in 2026.
PZ Cussons Nigeria paid off foreign currency borrowing in the region of N64 billion during the year and also reduced local currency debts.
Further gains in margins enabled more than a four-and-a-half times jump in pre-tax profit to close at over N77 billion for the year. Profit for the year advanced almost fivefold from N10 billion to N49 billion over the period.
The big profit boost has recovered the company for shareholders, whose stake in the company was washed off by accumulated losses. The company has turned around from retained losses of N38.8 billion at the end of the previous financial year to a retained profit of N8 billion.
Shareholders’ funds have equally revived from negative N17.3 billion to positive N70.6 billion over the period.
The company earned N11.80 per share at the end of the 2026 financial year, a big increase from the N2.40 per share it posted for the previous financial year.
The company has reclaimed the ability to pay dividends to shareholders with its return to positive retained earnings, but whether it will pay out or retain all would be disclosed when the audited accounts are released.
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