October 25 (SeeNews) - Croatian food, beverage and drug producer Podravka [ZSE:PODR-R-A] said on Tuesday its consolidated nine-month net profit rose 11.8% on the year to 146.7 million kuna ($21.3 million/19.5 million euro) mainly thanks to lower finance costs.
The company's sales revenue jumped by an annual 23.1% to 3 billion kuna in January-September, with its main food business generating a 29.9% growth to 2.5 billion kuna thanks to the consolidation of Slovenian food maker Zito, which became effective as of October 1, 2015, Podravka said in a bourse filing.
Podravka suffered foreign exchange losses of 51.1 million kuna during the review period.
The company's consolidated EBIT climbed 20.6% on the year to 201.2 million kuna, while EBITDA jumped 22% to 337.4 million kuna.
The group's pharmaceutical business generated revenues of 565.6 million kuna for the nine-month period, up 0.2% year-on-year. Revenues from sales of own-brand drugs rose 5.2%, primarily due to the expansion of the business cooperation in the Russian market.
Podravka noted it recorded sales growth on all its markets in the first nine months, with the Russia, CIS and the Baltics region outperforming with a 55.2% increase, backed by a stronger contribution from the food segment compared to the drug business line.
Blue chip Podravka share price climbed 1.8% to 378.00 kuna on the Zagreb stock exchange by 13:43 local time on Tuesday, performing better than the market, as the CROBEX index was up 0.41% and the CROBEX10 index was up 0.50% by the same time.
(1 euro=7.50368 kuna)