WASHINGTON: Mondi has lifted its H1 pretax profit to €482m, from €392m, with group revenue slipping to €3.3bn, from €3.5bn. Interim dividend was 18.81 euro cents a share, from 14.38 cents.
CEO David Hathorn said Mondi delivered a strong performance in the first half of 2016 with underlying operating profit up 8% to €529 million and a return on capital employed of 21.2%. “We saw strong contributions from Consumer Packaging, Uncoated Fine Paper and the South Africa Division, partially offset by the anticipated price weakness in certain of our packaging paper grades.
“We continue to make good progress in driving growth through our capital investment programme. We are on track to deliver an anticipated €60 million in incremental operating profit in 2016 from recently completed major capital projects, and our projects in development remain on time and on budget. “The Boards recently approved the first phase of a modernisation programme at our Steti mill in the Czech Republic with follow-on investments still under evaluation.
In April 2016 we completed the acquisition of a corrugated packaging plant in Poland, and we have recently completed two acquisitions that will further enhance our product offering and geographic reach in the growing consumer packaging segment. “While we saw some price weakness in certain of our packaging grades in the first half, demand for these products remains strong and pricing has generally stabilised with increases recently achieved in certain grades. “The second half will be impacted by planned maintenance shuts at a number of our mills and the usual seasonal downturn in our Uncoated Fine Paper business.
“Furthermore, we anticipate a lower forestry fair value gain than was recognised in the first half. We expect to continue to benefit from stable input costs and incremental contributions from our capital investment programme, together with the stability afforded by our downstream converting businesses. “While mindful of the heightened macroeconomic and political uncertainties in Europe, we remain confident of continuing to deliver an industry leading performance in line with our expectations.”
