Sri Lanka’s Aitken Spence March net down 56-pct amid lower revenues

May 31, 2016 (LBO) – Profits at Sri Lanka’s Aitken Spence group which has interests in tourism, logistics and power generation fell 56 percent to 608 million rupees in the March 2016 quarter, interim accounts showed. The group reported earnings of 1.50 rupees per share for the quarter against 3.
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41 rupees per share reported a year ago. The group posted 7.25 billion rupees net revenue in the March quarter compared to 9.41 billion rupees revenue reported in the same period of last year. Employee benefits expenses rose 15 percent to 1.52 billion rupees in the quarter while finance costs tripled to 306 million rupees. For the twelve months, the firm reported earnings of 4.99 rupees per share on profits of 2.02 billion rupees, which fell from 3.57 billion rupees a year earlier. Net revenues fell 26 percent to 25.69 billion rupees during the year against the previous year. In the segmental analysis, profits from the tourism sector fell 38 percent to 2.28 billion rupees while profits from strategic investments turned to a loss of 510 million rupees in the year. Profits from maritime and logistics rose 70 percent to 1.04 billion rupees while profits from service sector increased to 124 million rupees from 82 million rupees. “The past year has been a challenging one for the group, attributable to a number of factors including the cessation of the power agreement with the CEB, a slowdown in the national economy, disappointing performance in the Maldivian hotel sector and foreign exchange losses in a number of overseas investments," Chairman of Aitken Spence, D H S Jayawardena said. "However, we have proactively positioned ourselves for exponential growth in the medium and long term through strategic investments.” The group has paid super gain tax of 319.3 million rupees during the quarter ended December 2015. The consolidate statements of last year have been restated to adjust for an error by Fiji Ports Terminal Limited which affected the period prior to the group acquiring the controlling stake in the company. By the end of 2016 financial year there were 4,404 public shareholders holding 36.48 percent of company shares.