Modupe Gbadeyanka
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Chief Executive Officer of Lafarge Africa Plc, Mr Michel Puchercos, has assured that the cement company will do everything necessary to improve its earnings and growth in the fourth quarter of this year.
Mr Puchercos gave this assurance while reacting to the third quarter financial statements of the firm, which were recently released to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).
In the results, the company posted a 7.25 percent decline in the net sales from its major market, Nigeria, while the total net sales went down by 25.14 percent.
However, the company had a strong EBITDA (pre-IFRS 16) of 32.7 percent growth in Q3 2019 and 20.3 percent increase in nine months.
The company’s head said he expects the anticipated growth and improvement in the Q4 earnings to be mainly influenced by a projected rise in the demand for cement as well as a stable pricing environment.
Business Post reports that Lafarge Africa competes with other players in the cement industry like Dangote Cement, CCNN and others. Recently, BUA Group, a major shareholder in CCNN, promised to crash prices of its products.
According to the CEO, “Our Strategy 2022, building for growth, in Nigeria is delivering the expected results with strong EBITDA and operating profit improvement, robust net income and operating cash flow development.”
He said, “Our turnaround and cost reduction strategy in Q3 continue to deliver strong margins with improvement in commercial transformation, logistics performance, industrial and energy efficiencies,” emphasising that, “Our ambition is to continue the acceleration of growth and earnings in Q4.”
Continuing, Mr Puchercos said, “Based on the above trends, with market demand, which is expected to accelerate in Q4 compared to Q3 2019, a stable pricing environment and the successful execution of Strategy 2022, we expect to continue to deliver in Q4 2019.”
In the first nine months of this year, Lafarge Africa had its operating profit multiplied by 2.7x and its finance costs dropped by 70.6 percent.
The cement firm recorded a positive net income for four consecutive quarters, with a successful divestment from Lafarge South Africa Holdings and a significant deleveraging with net financial debt reduction by 79.2 percent.
