Julius Berger Nigeria Plc has released its unaudited financial statement of comprehensive income for Q3 ended September 30th, 2022, which shows a profit of N960 million, an 18% dip from the amount in Q3 last year.
The Q3 result is on the back of an inflationary year, where businesses and their consumers have had to deal with the rising cost of goods and services as well as continuously depreciating currency.
A further dive into the result shows that the company realized profit, despite the company slowing down on revenue for the period from N108 billion in Q3 last year to N92 billion in Q3 this year. The company’s revenue comes from three core business segments, which offer construction, civil engineering, building, and facility management services to third parties across Nigeria.
Notably, this year, it operationally commenced cashew processing as disclosed in the report under diversification.
Despite increasing inflation for the period, the company reported a dip in the cost of sales to N76 billion, compared to the N93 billion reported in the previous year’s Q3, while the gross profit stood at N15.6 billion, from N14.6 billion during the period. Meanwhile, the financial report did not detail the reason for incurring the lower costs of sales.
Marketing and administrative expenses declined to N41milllion and N10.1 billion respectively during the period from N69.5 million and N10.6 billion in Q3 last year.
Forex challenges – The company, however, saw a foreign exchange acquisition loss to the tune of N2.7 billion. Compared to last year when it saw a record N2.3 billion foreign exchange gains/losses typically arise from cross-border transactions that are denominated in foreign currencies as they include the import and export of goods and services, acquisition and disposal of assets as well as intercompany loans.
- Nairametrics reported that the exchange rate between the naira and the US dollar fell big at the black market on Friday, 28th October 2022, following the announcement of the CBN to design new naira notes for higher denominations during the week.
- Currency traders have expressed fear that the exchange rate between the naira and dollar on the black market may hit N1000/$1 by the end of the year.
Earnings per share for the period were valued at N0.10 as against that of the same period last year, valued at N0.28. Julius Berger’s share price last traded at N25.9 as of Monday, 31st November 2022 while its market cap stood at N44 billion.
