8th Feb 2017 07:16
LONDON (Alliance News) - Corrugated packaging company Smurfit Kappa Group PLC on Wednesday reported growth in annual profit, driven by margin improvements in the business which added leverage to marginal revenue growth.
The Irish group, which became a FTSE 100 constituent in December after having moved to a primary London listing earlier in the year, said it made a pretax profit of EUR654.0 million in the year to the end of December, up 9.0% from the EUR599.0 million it made a year before.
Revenue grew only 1.0% year-on-year, up to EUR8.16 billion from EUR8.11 billion the year before, but Smurfit's earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation margin improved to 15.1% from 14.6% the year before to benefit the bottom line.
Smurfit said it delivered solid volume growth across its markets in Europe and the Americas, coupled with a resilient box pricing environment and the investments it made over the course of the year in high-return capital projects.
The group declared a final dividend of 57.60 euro cents per share, up 20% on the prior year, with its total dividend rising 17% to 79.60 euro cents.
"These strong results against most performance metrics were delivered despite the significant headwinds experienced by the group in higher raw material input costs and adverse currency impacts. This once again highlights the strength of the group's integrated business model, our geographically diverse portfolio of businesses and our performance based culture," said Chief Executive Tony Smurfit.
"From a demand perspective, the year has started well across most areas of our business and, while recently announced paper price increases should translate with the customary time lag into higher box prices, we look forward to 2017 and beyond," he added.
By Sam Unsted; [email protected]; @SamUAtAlliance
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