MOSCOW, November 14 (RIA Novosti) – Russian fertilizer holding company PhosAgro posted an IFRS net profit of 19.12 billion rubles ($615 million) in January-September 2012, up 20 percent on the same period last year.
That was above a consensus forecast of analysts who expected the company’s net financial result at 15.5 billion rubles.
The company’s basic and diluted earnings per share came to 128 rubles ($4.12) for the first nine months of 2012 compared to 113 rubles ($3.93) in the same period last year.
The company’s revenues in that period grew by 7.6 percent to 79.237 billion rubles ($2.55 billion) while EBITDA rose by 3.2 percent to 27.194 billion rubles ($874 million).
“In the nine months of 2012 PhosAgro revenue and sales volumes benefited from the company’s strategy of enhancing production flexibility, with substantial growth in NPK production in the first half of the year followed by increasing DAP volumes in 3Q 2012,” the company said in a statement.
Cash flow from operating activities amounted to 21.7 billion rubles ($699 million) in the first nine months of 2012 compared to 27.7 billion rubles ($963 million) in the same period last year. The company’s capital expenditure in cash terms during the nine months of 2012 was 9.7 billion rubles ($313 million) compared to 9.4 billion rubles ($326 million) a year earlier
The company’s net debt fell to 10.5 billion rubles ($341 million) as of September 30, 2012 from 15.2 billion rubles ($472 million) on December 31, 2011, resulting in a net debt to annualized EBITDA ratio of 0.29x.
“In the first nine months of 2012 we increased revenue by 8 percent y-o-y, while delivering growth in production and sales of phosphate-based fertilizers of 6 percent and 7 percent respectively,” PhosAgro CEO Maxim Volkov said.
“By operating at full capacity and increasing the efficiency of our production units we were able to maintain a very solid EBITDA margin of 34 percent, which is only a slight decrease in a year when DAP/MAP pricing was under pressure globally,” he said.