Staff at Derrimon Trading.
Revenues for the Derrimon Trading first quarter March this year, climbed 27 percent to $1.94 billion above the $1.53 billion reported for the 2017 quarter and led to a big hike in profit.
The company reported a strong 45 percent jump in its first quarter results, from $35 million to $52 million or 21 cents per share to March this year, but profit could have been even higher had they not incurred finance cost which jumped 56 percent to $38 million from $25 million in 2017, in refinancing the preference shares they held previously at higher rates than the new ones. IC Insider.com is forecasting earnings per share of just over 80 cents for the current year.
This year is the last for profit to enjoy full tax free status, in 2019 profit will be taxed at half the usual 25 percent rate less payroll tax credits.
“The full quarter’s performance of the retail stores as well as the impact of the joint venture positively influenced the growth of the revenue during this reporting quarter,” Derrick Cotterell, the chairman reported to shareholders.
Gross profit for the period was $353 million representing 18 percent of revenues and was up from gross profit of $279 million in the 2017 period with a similar percentage of revenues. According to Cotterell there was improved margin in the core business resulting from “a combination of improvement in margins arising from strategies employed within both the distribution & retail segments of the business, the positive impact from the culled distribution portfolio and improved margins from growth of the supermarket portfolio.” Margins for the non-manufacturing arm rose to 17.2 percent from 16.94 percent in 2017.
The company’s equity position is $1.04 billion but borrowed funds stand at $1.22 billion, cash and investments amounts to $432 million thus negating some of the negative of the high leveraging of the group. With much of the cash and investments held by Caribbean Flavours, the larger portion is not readily available to Derrimon. Current assets amount to $2 billion and current liabilities at $413 million.
The company is proposing to do a major increase in the authorized share capital, with some being set aside to facilitate the 10 for 1 stock split. With the stock price having climbed to the $20 region, the company should take the opportunity to raise equity capital and retire some of the debt now being carried by the parent company.
