Africa-Press – South-Africa. Oceana has hiked its interim dividend 136% as profits surged by more than half thanks to higher canned fish opening inventory levels and strong demand for products such as its Lucky Star brand. The JSE-listed diversified fishing group, which reported half-year results for the six months to end March, also reported price improvements for most of its products, in particular fish oil.
It said its strong performance underscored the benefit of being a diversified company “across species, geographies and currencies”, adding its results were achieved in an environment where consumers were coming under pressure from higher interest rates, inflation and rampant load shedding.
The company reported a 47.8% increase in revenue from continuing operations to R4.5 billion, saying this was driven by “good stock availability and strong demand for affordable protein driving consumption across the product range”.
Revenue also benefitted from improved pricing, particularly for fish oil, driven by constrained global supply and the effect of the weaker rand exchange rate on export and US-dollar translated revenue.
The group’s Lucky Star brand saw sales rise just over a fifth to a “record five-million cartons”.
It said it would pay an interim dividend of 130c, compared with the 55c paid in the same period last year, while headline earnings per share rose 123% to 313.5c. Profit before tax more than doubled to R552 million.
However, as far as wild-caught seafood was concerned, Oceana said horse mackerel caught in SA was down more than half on the prior period. It added that the 30.3% lower catch rate was due to La Nina climatic conditions and “associated higher sea temperatures”. Hake catches fell by more than a third due to both “fewer fishing days and poorer catch rates”.
The company warned that tough operating conditions in SA and increasing pressure on consumers were “expected to continue”, adding that the weaker rand would “increase margin pressure” on Lucky Star.
However, it remained “naturally hedged against currency volatility with a higher proportion of export and US-dollar denominated earnings weighted to the second half”.
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