Mondi’s profit up as consumer business gains

Paper and packaging producer Mondi reports 11% increase in first-half profits.

|||

Johannesburg - Mondi, a South African manufacturer of packaging for products from coffee beans to industrial chemicals, said first-half profit rose 11 percent as volumes in its consumer business increased.

Read also: Mondi in R1.5bn Turkish deal

Earnings per share excluding one-time items rose to 75 euro cents a share from 67.8 euro cents a year earlier, the Johannesburg-based company said in a statement on Thursday. Sales declined 4.2 percent to 3.3 billion euros ($3.7 billion).

“We saw strong contributions from consumer packaging, uncoated fine paper and the South Africa division, partially offset by the anticipated price weakness in certain of our packaging paper grades,” Chief Executive Officer David Hathorn said in the statement.

Mondi, which has its roots in printing paper and was spun out of Anglo American in 2007, now gets the majority of its revenue from packaging products and is seeking to grow further in the industry. The company has announced two consumer-packaging acquisitions in the previous two months with the agreement in June to buy 90 percent of Turkish producer Kalenobel for about 90 million euros and a deal last month for Russia’s ZAO Uralplastic-N.

The company declared an interim dividend of 18.81 euro cents a share, compared with 14.38 cents a year earlier.

The shares have declined 7.1 percent this year, valuing the company at R138 billion. That compares with a 0.5 percent fall on the FTSE/JSE Africa Top40 Index.

BLOOMBERG

For more on this topic, pick up a copy of Business Report tomorrow.