Healthcare company, May & Baker Nigeria Plc, has reported growth in its sales and profit in the third quarter of 2016.
The positive trend came as the healthcare company continued to leverage on its improved production capacity and increasingly efficient cost management to mitigate the tough operating environment.
May & Baker grew sales by 12.5 per cent to N5.94 billion within the nine-month period, despite the plunge in profit which rocked several firms in the Nigerian Healthcare sector.
Key extracts of the nine-month report for the period ended September 30, 2016 showed that turnover surged to N5.94 billion in 2016 as against N5.28 billion recorded in comparable period of 2015.
While higher cost of sales dropped gross profit from N1.75 billion to N1.70 billion, the company took advantage of its internal cost management to boost operating profit from N470.4 million in third quarter 2015 to N489.5 million in third quarter, 2016.
Also, finance costs reduced considerably from N425.39 million in third quarter 2015 to N377.93 million in third quarter 2016. Profit before tax rose to N66.24 million in 2016 as against N60.63 million recorded in corresponding period of 2015.
Profit after tax also grew to N44.4 million in 2016 compared with N41.2 million in 2015. With this, earnings per share improved from 4.21 kobo in third quarter 2015 to 4.53 kobo in third quarter 2016.
The third-quarter results further reinforced the steadiness of the company’s performance, after the leading healthcare company braced the odds to improve performance in the full-year 2015 and the first-half of this year.
Against the background of its improved performance in 2015, May & Baker Nigeria had increased total dividend payout by 20 per cent to N58.8 million for the 2015 business year compared to what it paid for 2014 business year.
