Singapore’s Wilmar first-quarter net profit drops by 3.7%

13 May 2011 09:51  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS)--Singapore’s oleochemicals major Wilmar International said on Friday that its first-quarter net profit dropped by 3.7% year on year to $386.7m (€270.7m) despite a sharp surge in its sales, partly because of the company’s debt-related fair value losses.

“The net profit included the fair value loss on embedded derivatives of the company’s convertible bonds and a profit within the sugar segment, relating to pre-acquisition hedging reserves,” the company said in a statement.

Excluding those exceptional items, Wilmar said that the company would have recorded a 3% increase in its net profit to $407.8m.

Wilmar’s sales during the first quarter jumped by 41% year on year to $9.54bn because of higher prices in agricultural commodities, the company said.

Wilmar’s plantations and palm oil mills recorded a 26% increase in its pre-tax profit to $81.8m, which was boosted by the company’s higher production volume of crude palm oil (CPO) and higher prices of the product.

The company’s production of fresh fruit bunches were up by 17% to 844,069 tonnes, with its production yield rising by 3% to 4.3m tonnes/hectare, the company said.

Wilmar entered the sugar business through the acquisition of Australia’s Sucrogen and Indonesia’s Jawamanis Rafinasi.

Under this segment, Wilmar’s milling production recorded a pre-tax loss of $22.7m, while its activities in the refining segment recorded a pre-tax profit of $15.4m in the first quarter, the company said.

($1 = €0.70)

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By: Pearl Bantillo
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