Carreras takes a big hit but tax recovery starts

The only good news from Carreras‘ first quarter results is buried in the notes to the end of the quarterly report. Namely, the Tax Authority has made arrangements with the company to offset current tax liabilities against the amount owing and that they have so far recovered $338 million during the latest quarter.

Elsewhere, revenues plummeted from $3.1 billion in June 2012 quarter to just $2.155 billion, a sharp 30 percent drop that is not all coming from the recently announced smoking ban. Profit after tax fared even worse than the fall in revenues dipping by 40 percent. That is not good news for the stock which has been declining ever since the ban on public smoking was announced.

An interesting development is that gross margin improved to 100 percent from 90 in the 2012 similar quarter and 86.5 percent for all of the 2013 fiscal year. The price increase earlier this year has clearly had a negative impact with the company’s customers, which seems to have taken a big bite out of sales. A look at sales in 2012 showed a big jump in the last half of the year coming into the March 2013 quarter, suggesting that distributors were stocking up on the product in anticipation of price increase and stopped stock piling once the price adjustment was implemented. As such, the fall off in sales may not be as bad as it appears on the surface.

Expenses rise | While revenues plummeted, expenses did not. In fact sales & marketing went up by a third to $207 million from $152 million and administrative expenses from $278 million to $320 million, a 15 percent jump.

Tax Recovered | The tax now recoverable is down to $1.4 billion from $1.733 billion at the end of March. If the tax authority allows a full recovery, then the full amount of the current liability could be recovered this fiscal year and most likely be distributed as dividends to shareholders.

Carreras ended up with cash funds of $3 billion at the end of June, equity is at $3 billion or $6.30 per share. Current liabilities are at $2.6 billion which includes tax payable of $1.5 billion against current assets of $4.1 billion.

These are clearly times of uncertainty for the stock with the fall in revenues and the smoking ban that no one really knows what impact the ban will have over the next few months. With the stock not having a great deal of bids in the market currently, it’s anyone guess where the price will settle in the short term.

Carreras cut the latest dividend from $1.50 paid last year August, to $1 to be paid in August this year, an amount that is in line with the latest quarterly profit.