By Dipo Olowookere
On Thursday, one of the cement manufacturing firms in the country, Cement Company of Northern Nigerian (CCNN) Plc, released its unaudited financial statements for the period ended March 31, 2019.
From the results released, the company improved its revenue by 213 percent to N16.9 billion from N5.4 billion, which was impacted by its merger with Kalambina Cement last year. This increased the production capacity of CCNN from 500,000MT/annum to 2 million MT/annum.
The merger also impacted on the cost of sales of CCNN, which significantly grew to N9.2 billion in Q1 2019 from N3.1 billion in Q1 2018.
However, the gross profit printed by the firm rose to N7.7 billion from N2.3 billion, with the other income going down massively to N2.2 million from N116.9 million.
In the period under review, CCNN disclosed in its financial status that its selling and distribution costs zoomed to N1 billion from N245.9 million a year ago, while the administrative expenses skyrocketed to N1.3 billion from N597.7 million, with the net finance costs rising to N43.7 million from N31.9 million.
But the profit before tax posted by the company appreciated to N5.4 billion from N1.5 billion, while the profit after tax rose to N3.6 billion from N1.1 billion.
Despite the improvement in the company’s top and bottom lines, its earnings per share declined to 28 kobo from 86 kobo. This was due to the disproportionate increase in the PAT and units of ordinary shares of the firm, which increased to 13.1 billion units from 1.3 billion as a result of the merger.
Adedapo Adesanya