2nd May 2014 11:05
LONDON (Alliance News) - Packaging giant Smurfit Kappa Group PLC Friday said it almost doubled its pretax profit in the first quarter of its new financial year, boosted by a strong performance from its Americas business and price increased in Europe.
The Dublin-based company, one of the world?s largest integrated manufacturers of paper-based packaging, reported a pretax profit of EUR104 million for the first quarter ended March 31, up from EUR57 million a year earlier.
Revenues in the quarter rose 2.1% to EUR1.93 million, up from EUR1.89 million the prior year, but were down 5% on the fourth quarter of 2013.
Smurfit Kappa said the first quarter benefited from a strong underlying performance in its Americas business, price and volume improvements in its European packaging operations, and a reduction in financing costs, following the completion of a significantly more attractive financing structure for the group, it said.
Smurfit Kappa said its Americas business is trending strongly, with good earnings progress across most of the markets. It said the business's first quarter underlying performance was driven by good growth in demand, and price increases.
It said that European box volumes improved in the quarter. The group also said that while it has no operations in Ukraine, volumes in Eastern Europe were negatively affected by political unrest in the region.
However, the group said that some of these benefits were offset by a number of negative factors, including downtime in its kraftliner operations, at a net cost of around EUR8 million, and a further EUR18 million from the adverse impact of currency movements.
Smurfit Kappa shares were down 2.2% at EUR15.65 per share Friday midday.
By Rowena Harris-Doughty; [email protected]; @rharrisdoughty
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