Flour Mills Nigeria reduces net debt by 30% proposes N1.20 dividend
Adesola Afolabi was a businessamlive reporter and Head of Financial desk.
Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc (FMN), has announced a 30 percent reduction on its overall net debt.
The announcement was made via its recently released full year results for the year ended March 31, 2019.
According to the company’s results made available to business am, it’s debt which stood at N22.9 billion as at March 31, 2019 is lower than N32.6 billion incurred by the company in the same period of 2018.
FMN noted that the reduced debts has enabled the group to strengthen its balance sheet and increase proposed dividend by 20 percent to N1.20.
The dividend payment is subject to investor approval at the company’s annual general meeting scheduled for Wednesday, September 4, 2019.
Anders Kristiansson, group chief finance officer, of the company noted that the company’s strategy to restructure the balance sheet base and optimize the financing costs have started to yield the desired results.
“The business showed increasing levels of efficiency. Despite ongoing pressures on consumer disposable income in many of our target categories, we continued delivered a stronger quarter 4 than last year,”Kristiansson said while commenting on the results.
Also commenting, Paul Gbededo, FMN’s group managing director, said “We have made substantial progress this year, even in the face of an adverse and challenging business environment.
Our growth and efficiency initiatives across our various functions and businesses have started to show anticipated gains as we continue to focus on organic sales growth and position the business for continuous profitability.”
The flour milling company envisages continuous growth in key segments of the business such as food and agro-allied, through targeted strategies to deliver improved margins and operational efficiencies.
It noted in it’s outlook for the 2019 year that a continuous implementation of turnaround initiatives in the Agro-allied business, accelerated expansion in the B2C segment, optimal operation of its supply chain and further balance sheet management is expected to result in higher profitability.