Emerging successful from the pandemic hit year, ICI Pakistan Limited’s (PSX: ICI) financial performance in FY22 continued to show growth. The company announced 69 percent increase in consolidated earnings in FY22 that includes its polyester, soda ash and chemicals, agri sciences, pharma and animal health business segments as well as its subsidiaries ICI Pakistan PowerGen Limited and NutriCo Morinaga (Private) Limited.
Gross profits also witnessed a similar growth rate, but the gross margins slipped during the year due to higher fuel prices and currency depreciation. However, operating earnings and margins grew due to moderate growth in selling and administrative expenses.
The company’s bottomline grew by 69 percent year-on-year as a result. However, growth in company’s earnings for FY22 was cut short due to the imposition of supertax imposed on the corporate sector during the last quarter of FY22. Pre-tax earnings growth for ICI stood at 86 percent year-on-year.
Despite imposition of supertax, the company posted growth which emanated from recovering consumer demand, enhanced efficiency across all business segments, acquisition of additional shareholding in NutriCo Pakistan (Private) Limited (now merged with and into NutriCo Morinaga (Private) Limited, and one-off net positive impact from the remeasurement of previously held equity interest of NutriCo Pakistan (Private) Limited.
Recently, the Board of Directors of ICI Pakistan Limited authorized a partial divestment of the issued and paid-up capital of 26.5 percent of its subsidiary NutriCo Morinaga (Private) Limited to Morinaga Milk Industry C. Limited - a Japanese giant in the dairy corporate sector. NutriCo Morinaga (Private) Limited has been a JV between ICI Pakistan, Morinaga Milk and Unibrands (Private) Limited for local manufacturing and distribution of nutritional formula products, which was recently merged with NutriCo Pakistan (Private) Limited. The BoD has also decided to change the name of the company to Lucky Core Industries Limited to align it with the new holding company’s name, Lucky Cement Limited.
