February 21 (SeeNews) - Croatian food, beverage and drug producer Podravka [ZSE:PODR-R-A] said on Tuesday its consolidated net profit jumped 54.7% on the year to 182.4 million kuna ($25.8 million/24.5 million euro) last year, excluding key one-off effects in 2015 arising from consolidation effects and specific tax benefits.
If one-off effects are taken into consideration, Podravka's net profit dropped from 397.3 million kuna in 2015, Podravka said in a bourse filing.
The company's sales revenue increased by an annual 15.4% to 4.2 billion kuna in January-December 2016, thanks to the consolidation of Slovenian food maker Zito, which became effective as of October 1, 2015, Podravka noted.
"Last year for the first time Podravka Group achieved sales revenue higher than 4 billion kuna, significantly contributed to by the successful first year of integration of Zito d.d", Zvonimir Mrsic, Podravka's management board president, said in the filing. "During 2016, further business internationalization was continued, with speeding up of the started activities related to Podravka's breakthrough to the markets of Middle East, Africa and China".
Consolidated sales of Podravka's food segment increased 19.4% to 3.4 billion kuna in 2016, while sales of pharmaceuticals rose 1.3% to 815.2 million kuna.
The main growth initiator in the observed period was the region Russia, CIS and Baltic, which achieved a 35.8% increase in revenue to 262.1 million kuna. The Adria region followed with revenues of 3 billion kuna, representing a growth of 15.7%. Sales revenue in the European region expanded by 10.7% to 778.8 million kuna, while sales the New markets region increased 5.4% to 147.2 million kuna.
The company's consolidated EBIT dropped 5.7% on the year to 268.9 million kuna, while EBITDA edged up 0.2% to 469.6 million kuna.
Podravka suffered foreign exchange losses of 54.4 million kuna last year.
The company's capital investments in new factories and the modernisation of production sites was a significant 594.2 million kuna, an increase of 2.2 times on 2015.
(1 euro=7.44720 kuna)