Displaying items by tag: Results

India: Ultratech Cement Ltd, part of the Aditya Birla group, has said that its net profit for quarter ending 31 March 2012 rose by 19% compared to the same quarter of 2011. It attributed the increase to higher sales volume and an increase in product prices.

The profit at India's largest cement company by sales climbed to US$165m for the January-March 2012 period, from US$138m in the same period in 2011.

Sales also increased by 19%, to US$1.01bn from US$582m.

Indian cement companies were helped in the last quarter by revived construction activity which boosted both sales volume and product prices. However, improvement in the profit margin was limited by a rise in costs of coal and diesel. Ultratech sold 11.54Mt of cement during the quarter compared with 10.70Mt in the same period in 2011.

Ultratech didn't say how much prices rose in the January-March 2012 quarter but brokerage firm Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd said that prices grew by 10% compared to the same period in 2011. Ultratech said its variable costs also rose by 10% as a result of higher energy prices. It also added that the surplus capacity in the Indian cement industry is likely to continue until 2015. Together with the rising cost of raw materials this is expected to put pressure to profit margins.

India: ACC has posted a total income of US$579m for the first quarter of 2012, an increase of 19% compared to the US$488m that it made in the same quarter in 2011.

Operating earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation increased by 10%, growing from US$112m in 2011 to US$124m in 2012. Net profit after tax for the quarter fell from US$67.2m in 2011 to US$29.1m in 2012, a decrease of over 55%!

In its consolidated financial results ACC explained that the marked decrease in profit was due to its decision to change its method of providing depreciation on captive power plants from 'Straight Line' to 'Written Down Value' methods at the rates prescribed in Schedule XIV to the Companies Act, 1956. Accordingly, ACC has recognised an additional depreciation charge of US$65.5m. Using the previous method of depreciation profit after tax would have been US$73.6m, a slight increase on the 2011 figure. This change would have had no impact on EBITDA and cash profit for the quarter ended March 2012.

While the company's results benefited from better volumes during the quarter, manufacturing costs and realisations were affected by steep escalations in the cost of inputs such as coal, fly ash and gypsum. The cost of transportation also rose significantly as a result of the hike in rail freight and increase in diesel prices.

Kazakhstan: Steppe Cement, a construction materials producer in Kazakhstan, has sold 170,080t of cement for US$13.2m in the first quarter of 2012, a fall in sales volume of 9% year-on-year. Yet in the same period in 2011 the producer sold 187,404t for US$11.7m, an increase of revenue of 13%.

Total market consumption in Kazakhstan during the first quarter of 2012 increased by 9% compared to the same quarter in 2011. Its marketshare fell to 18% in the quarter compared with 20% for the whole of 2011. The average price of cement from the producer increased by 25% in the first quarter year-on-year. By share price the company is currently valued at US$68.5m.

Indonesia: Indonesia's domestic cement sales were 12.5Mt in the first quarter of 2012, up 18.2% year-on-year compared to the same period in 2011, according to data from cement firm PT Semen Gresik. March 2012 sales were 4.4Mt, a rise of 16.2% year-on-year, the data showed, with most sales on the islands of Sumatra and Java.

"Indonesia's low cement consumption of around 199kg/capita in 2011 continues to provide ample room for growth," said Teguh Hartanto, analyst at Bahana Securities in Jakarta.

PT Indocement Tunggal Perkasa Tbk, Indonesia's biggest cement firm by market value, has estimated that national demand for cement will grow by 8-10% as infrastructure projects increase after a government law in December 2011 speeds up land acquisition. The country's cement sales fluctuate month to month depending on factors such as holidays and the government's end-of-year project completion deadlines.

New Zealand: Holcim New Zealand has reported an after-tax surplus of US$6.77m in 2011 according to its annual report. Total revenue for the year fell by 1.55% to US$214 from US$217m in 2010. Sales of cement fell slightly in 2011 and have been in decline since mid-2008. The national use of cement is a quarter lower than the last peak in 2007.

Notably a proposed new cement plant at Weston, near Oamaru, was on hold because of global economic uncertainty and would not be considered again before late in 2012, the annual report said. However, Holcim's partnerships with large construction companies brought several new projects in 2011, including the Fisher & Paykel Healthcare plant in Auckland and the Auckland District Health Board's six-level car park. Customers south of Christchurch were serviced from Dunedin and bagged cement for Christchurch came from Nelson and Dunedin while bulk cement for Holcim's Sockburn silos was railed from Westport and trucked from Dunedin.

Vietnam: Vietnam's cement sales came to 9.57Mt in the first quarter of 2012, according to the Ministry of Construction. This fulfilled 17.4% of the whole-year plan due to the implementation of several projects in March 2012. Production was 9.98Mt, meeting 18.1% of the full-year target. Production in March 2012 was 4.85Mt, representing nearly half of the quarter's total.

Vietnam spent US$90.5m on imports in the first quarter of 2012, making up 20.7% of the whole-year plan, including US$30.9m in March 2012. The country's exports were US$43.3m, fulfilling 19.2% of the full-year target, including US$10.4m in March 2012.

National consumption is forecast to reach between 55Mt and 56.5Mt in 2012, rising by 11% and 12% from 2011 respectively. Yet the country's cement output is forecast to rise to 73Mt in 2012 due to the additional operation of eight new cement plants with combined production capacity of 6.9Mt. In 2011 Vietnam produced and sold 49.3Mt. The country also imported 1.15Mt and exported 5.5Mt of cement and clinker during the period, the ministry noted.

Saudi Arabia: Yanbu Cement has announced that its first-quarter net profit for 2012 rose by 43% year-on-year to US$38.6m. Earnings per share for the first three months of the year rose to US$0.37 from US$0.26 in the year earlier period. It added that its first-quarter operating profit surged by 44% to US$39.9m.

Meanwhile Yamama Saudi Cement has said that its first quarter profit surged by 54% compared to the first quarter of 2011 to US$74.1m due to higher sales and better operational efficiency. Its first-quarter earnings per share came in at US$0.37 compared to US$0.35 in 2011, according to a statement. Its operating profit for the three-month period rose to US$76.5m, compared to US$49.1m in the same period of 2011, a year-on-year rise of 55%.

Russia: The Russian cement market remains unable to match its performance in 2007-2008. Although output grew by 15% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2012, Russian companies produced 'just' 9.61Mt of cement. Meanwhile cement prices continue to increase in the country but they are not expected to reach the pre-crisis levels before 2019.

In the first quarter of 2012 production climbed by 15% year-on-year to 9.61Mt according to an estimate made by CMPro Ltd, a Moscow-based company. By comparison in the first quarters of 2007and 2008, production exceeded 11Mt.

According to the President of Lafarge Cement, production in 2012 will rise by 10% against the 2011 level of 56.2Mt, as the market restores due to new construction and infrastructure projects. 2011 was a record year since 2007 as 63.2 million m2 of housing was commissioned. In line with this view Siberian Cement expects cement prices to increase by 12-15% in the summer of 2012 and the CEO of Sukholozhsktsementa Maksim Sotnikov believes that the annual price growth will reach 10%.

Less optimistically, the general director of Basecement Vyacheslav Shmatov said that cement imports are curbing the growth of prices on the domestic market. According to CMPro Ltd, in the first quarter of 2012 imports doubled year-on-year to 340,000t.

Saudi Arabia: The Qassim Cement Company has reported that its net profit for the first quarter of 2012 grew by 7.65%, from US$39.2m in 2011 to US$42.2m.

The firm added that its consolidated gross profit rose by 4.87% to US$45.5m, up from US$43.4m in 2011. Its consolidated operating profit in the quarter went up by 6.93% to US$43.2m, compared with US$40.44m in 2011. Qassim Cement's first-quarter consolidated net profit increased by 8.45% from US$39m as reported in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Croatia: The CEO of Holcim Croatia has said that the company expects flat revenues in 2012 compared to 2011, while it expects to maintain its capacity utilisation rate of 80%. "The last three years were extremely difficult for the construction sector in Croatia," explained Mario Grassl. "Annual cement consumption in Croatia has contracted by 40% compared to 2008. The lack of investment in the construction sector and an unfavourable ratio of fixed costs compared to sales volumes are the main reasons for the loss of around Euro2.5m that Holcim Croatia posted in 2011."

To make matters worse, the overcapacity of local and international producers has depressed sale prices while input costs, mainly those related to fuels, raw materials, energy and distribution, have increased significantly. On top of that, the recent increase in Croatia's VAT rate from 23% to 25% is an additional burden for the end user.

Demand for construction materials in Croatia is still declining. Grassl said that he thinks that a full recovery to pre-crisis levels is still at least three years away. The customer base has been shrinking due to bankruptcy and liquidation procedures and although expectations for improved liquidity in the business sector are high, they will have to be underpinned by stimulus measures at government level. "Based on data from the Croatian Bureau of Statistics, the number of finished residential construction projects in 2011 was around 23% lower than in 2010. Looking ahead, there are no major projects that could be realistically expected to get underway in the next six months. Therefore we expect demand this year to stay at the 2011 level with consumption of cement flat at around 1.8Mt," Grassl said.

Despite the sharp drop in domestic demand over the last few years, Holcim has managed to maintain a share of around 20% of the Croatian market.The company's revenue grew by around 6% in 2011 and Grassl said that he expects a flat performance in that respect in 2012 in a 'best-case' scenario.

In 2011 Holcim Croatia managed to post a growth in exports to Italy and to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the low single digits and expects exports to be similar in 2012. The company exports approximately 20% of its output to Italy which is its largest export market, followed by Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. "Due to logistic bottlenecks and costs we do not plan to enter new markets," Grassl said.

On all three segments of the building materials market where Holcim Croatia is active, investment activities in 2012 will be mainly related to maintenance and better cost management. "For example, in the first quarter of the year we invested Euro1m at the Koromacno cement plant in the reconstruction of a clinker cooler. This will increase thermal energy efficiency and decrease maintenance costs," said Grassl.