By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria’s indigenous energy group, Forte Oil Plc, recorded a massive profit after tax of N5.5 billion in the first six months of this year, way higher than what was achieved in the first six months of last year.
According to data harvested from the company’s financial statements released to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), the net profit declared by the firm was more than the N336.6 million recorded in the first half of 2018.
This purely indicated that the profit made the company after tax deductions improved significantly by 1,386 percent.
This could be attributed to the devaluation of interest on subsidy worth nearly N4.0 billion enjoyed by Forte Oil as parts of its finance income. In the earlier part of this year, the company sold one of its assets and the proceeds from the transaction shared to shareholders as special dividend.
Some weeks ago, its former Chairman, Mr Femi Otedola, divested his 75 percent stake in the company to a new investor, who decided not to tampered with the brand and its identity.
This is the first financial statements to be released by Forte Oil after the new owners took charged of the oil and gas firm and from the analysis, the finance income increased to N4.5 billion from N543 million recorded in HY 2018.
Revenue also saw a leap for Forte Oil as the organisation generated N82.8 billion in H1 2019 compared with the N61.8 billion recorded in the first six months of 2018.
In the period under consideration, the company had higher cost of sales of N77.2 billion when viewed side by side with the N56.1 billion utilised between January and June of the previous year.
Both distribution and administrative expenses went up compared to the previous period under consideration, as N1.13 billion was expended for the former against N1.12 billion in HY 2018, while N4.4 billion was recorded for the latter in contrast to N3.5 billion.
The gross profit made by the firm decreased to N5.6 billion in H1 2019 from N5.7 billion, while the other income increased to N3.5 billion from N950.1 million, with the operating profit rising to N3.5 billion from N2.0 billion.
Finance cost, according to the financial figures, went down to N1.7 billion from N1.9 billion, while the earnings per share rose to N4.18k in half year 2019 from 28 kobo in half year 2018.
