Singapore, August 28, 2008 - Olam International Limited, a leading global, integrated supply chain manager of agricultural products and food ingredients, today reported a Net Profit After Tax of S$167.7 million for the full year ended June 30, 2008, achieving a 53.8% increase over the previous corresponding year.
One of the key reasons for the strong earnings growth in FY2008 was the combined contribution from both the existing businesses (organic) as well as from acquisitions (inorganic). Existing businesses (organic growth) achieved Net Profits of S$149.0 million registering a 36.7% increase over FY2007 and was well above target. New businesses through acquisitions (inorganic growth) contributed net profits of S$18.7 million and accounted for 11.2% of Group Net Profits which was significantly above target.
The five acquisitions consolidated in FY2008 registered a combined operating NPAT of S$1.72 million. In addition there was a tax gain of S$11.44 million due to the consolidation of tax groups of QCH and Olam in Australia and the recognition of S$5.52 million in the P&L on account of negative goodwill arising from the completion of the Purchase Price Allocation (PPA) exercise in respect of PT DUS. Sales Revenue grew 48.7% to S$8.11 billion driven firstly by strong underlying volume growth of 30.6% which was broad based across all four segments and secondly by commodity price increases across most of the product portfolio during the year. Organic volume growth accounted for 20.1% of the overall volume growth and organic revenue grew by 32.9% compared to FY2007.NC rose 43.4% with contribution coming from all the four business segments. Margins measured as NC per tonne increased 9.7% from S$93 to S$102/tonne.
Olam’s Group Managing Director and CEO Sunny Verghese said: “Our ability to deliver this strong performance for the 19th year in a row, reliably and consistently across commodity up and down cycles, including challenging credit and capital market conditions experienced in 2007 and 2008 demonstrates the power of the Olam business model. The Olam model includes:
• a sharp focus on a single commodity asset class - the agricultural complex, allowing us to cumulate and compound our supply chain skills and build deep insights into our product markets;
• within that to be broadly diversified across 16 agricultural commodities, 56 countries, 6,500 customers and over 200,000 suppliers with no product, country, customer or supplier dominating our revenue or earnings;
• our participation as a supply chain manager rather than a positional, directional commodity trader leading to better predictability and visibility to our earnings;
• our ability to secure competitive advantage by out-origining our competitors and providing differentiated, customised marketing solutions and services to our customers;
• our growth model of getting our existing businesses to full potential through clearly articulated growth initiatives and migrating into adjacent businesses that share suppliers, customers, channels, costs or capabilities with our existing businesses thereby reducing our expansion and execution risk;
• being selectively integrated in the supply chain including upstream (plantations, origination), midstream(processing/manufacturing) and downstream (distribution) to capture a higher share of the profit pool;
• building a network and configuration of assets that helps us link and leverage our presence in origins and markets for these commodities;
• our field operating, risk, IT and control systems that serve as a foundational enabler which allows us to scale our business with low execution risk;
• our demonstrated track record to identify, acquire and integrate companies through acquisitions that have a clear strategic fit with our core business and which are earnings and value accretive;
• our consistent discipline in capital management;
• our high standard of corporate governance and transparency and building an excellent shareholder base;
• and above all, developing an exceptional and high calibre management team that provides us significant bandwidth to pursue profitable growth.
“Through all this we have, over time, built leading market positions in an attractive and growing industry and created a powerful momentum that will deliver profitable growth for years to come.” Olam’s CFO, Krishnan Ravikumar said: “We continue to deliver on our governing objective of maximising intrinsic shareholder value over time for our continuing shareholders. To this end, we have consistently focused on impacting three key value drivers: a) opening up thecapital spread; b) increasing the rate of profitable growth; and c) sustaining this growth over a period of time.
“In FY2008, we generated an equity spread of 19.7% achieving a ROE of 28.7% compared to a ROE of 20.6% in FY2007. We also improved total capital spread, where our ROIC grew from 12.35% in FY2007 to 13.21% in FY2008, generating a total capital spread of 6.56% in FY2008 compared to a capital spread of 5.41% in FY2007.”