Nestle Nigeria Plc has continued its recovery path, reporting a pre-tax profit of N51.15 billion in Q1 2025, marking a strong rebound from the N196.086 billion loss posted in the same period of 2024.
This follows a return to profitability in Q4 2024 and signals growing stability in the company’s financial performance.
The unaudited results also show a post-tax profit of N30.178 billion, representing 121 year-on-year growth.
Key highlights (Q1 2025 vs. Q1 2024)
- Revenue: N294.885 billion +60.71% yoY
- Cost of sales: N175.163 billion +30.31% YoY
- Gross profit: N119.722 billion +143.99% YoY
- Marketing and distribution expenses: N34.855 billion +76.58% YoY
- Administrative expenses: N11.003 billion +30.47% YoY
- Operating profits: N74.147 billion +254.40% YoY
- Finance cost: N23.466 billion -89.27% YoY
- Earnings per share: N38.07 +121.15% YoY
- Total assets: N898.924 billion +4.68%
- Shareholders’ funds: -N62.257 billion -32.54%
Insights
Nestle Nigeria has extended its recovery streak, turning in another profitable quarter. After bouncing back to profit in the last quarter of 2024, the company has kept that momentum going in early 2025.
- The strong performance came from a big jump in sales, which grew much faster than the cost of producing its goods. This helped the company make more money from each sale, boosting its overall profitability.
- Even though it spent more on marketing and running the business, it still managed to increase its operating profit by more than double.
A major turning point came from a sharp drop in finance costs. Last year, the company lost a lot of money due to exchange rate changes. This time around, those losses almost disappeared, giving profits a significant lift.
- The revaluation of foreign currency liabilities saw translation losses drop from N191.67 billion in Q1 2024 to just N163 million in Q1 2025.
Earnings per share more than doubled, showing that shareholders are seeing real benefits from the improved results.
- However, the company’s net worth remains negative, with shareholders’ funds standing at -N62.26 billion. This reflects accumulated losses that have not been fully reversed.
- Nevertheless, it marks a notable improvement from -N92.29 billion recorded at the end of December 2024, indicating a gradual recovery in the company’s financial position.
- Nestle continues to rely almost entirely on the Nigerian market for its sales, highlighting the importance of the local economy to its business.
Given this strong domestic focus and recent financial turnaround, investors may feel they deserve stronger returns.
Encouragingly, the company’s share price has seen a remarkable improvement this year, with a year-to-date gain of 25.7%, a sharp reversal from the 20.25% loss recorded during the same period last year.
