February 28 (SeeNews) - Croatian food, beverage and drug producer Podravka [ZSE:PODR-R-A] said on Wednesday its consolidated net profit plummeted 70.2% year-on-year to 54.4 million kuna ($8.9 million/7.3 million euro) in 2017, after minority interests.
The normalised net profit fell 16.2% to 165.6 million kuna in 2017, Podravka said in a bourse filing.
"The profitability of the Group in 2017 was heavily burdened with the unsustainable business model of new markets, which opened in 2015, the problems with a key customer in the Adria region and a situation with a distributor in the Western Europe", Podravka explained.
The company's sales revenue edged down by an annual 1.8% to 4.1 billion kuna in January-December 2017.
Consolidated sales of Podravka's food segment dropped 3.8% year-on-year to 3.2 billion kuna in 2017, while sales of pharmaceuticals rose 6.4% to 867.5 million kuna.
The main growth initiators in the observed period were Eastern Europe with sales of 286.9 million kuna, up 9.4% on the year, and New markets with sales expanding 21% to 30.3 milion kuna.
The Adria region saw a 3.6% drop in sales revenues to 2.9 billion kuna, while the sales in the Western Europe and overseas countries region edged up 0.6% to 423.0 million kuna. Sales revenue in Central Europe also increased slightly, by 0.4% to 482.3 million kuna.
The company's consolidated EBIT dropped 49.7% on the year to 135.2 million kuna in 2017, while EBITDA plummeted 20.6% to 374.1 million kuna.
The company's capital investments amounted to 203.8 million kuna in 2017, below plan of 325.8 million kuna.
In 2018, Podravka plans to invest 217.4 million kuna.
(1 euro=7.45645 kuna)