CANBERRA: Agricultural chemical company Nufarm has swung to profit in the first half, benefiting from a comparison to the previous year’s result which was weighed by over $100 million in restructuring charges. For the six months to January 31, Nufarm (NUF) booked net profit after tax of $20m, up from a loss of $91m last year. Its underlying earnings — which strip out one-off items — surged 67 per cent to $19.8m as total revenues climbed 15 per cent to $1.36 billion. “The results demonstrate that changes made to the business over the past 18 months are delivering positive outcomes and helping to build a platform for continued profitable growth,” chief executive Greg Hunt said. While market conditions were tagged “very competitive”, the company noted growth in sales for all its regional crop protection businesses, except Europe.
Nufarm’s business is weighted to the second-half, with the company carefully eyeing mixed seasonal conditions in Australia. “We expect the global crop protection market to remain very competitive, with low soft commodity pricing prevailing due to the strong crop harvests in most key cropping regions,” Mr Hunt said. “But with the benefit of our cost savings and performance improvement program, together with new product launches and improved customer relationships, I’m confident the business will continue to generate profitable growth.” The company tipped an improvement in pre-tax earnings for the full-year, as against fiscal 2016, although it did not detail specific forecasts. Nufarm booked an interim dividend of 5 cents a share, up 25 per cent on last year.
