DG Khan Cement net up

D G Khan Cement on Friday posted a 71.6 percent growth in its full-year net profit to Rs 829.8 million compared to Rs 483.5 million last year.
In a statement to the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE), the company said its board of directors has also approved a Rs 1.50 per share cash dividend along with 10 percent bonus shares. But the company said bonus shares are not entitled for the 15 percent final cash dividend for the year June 30, 2004.
The company’s earnings are in line with analysts’ expectations who were predicting net profit in the range of Rs 840 million to Rs 860 million.
The company said its sales increased 29.7 percent to Rs 3.882 billion in the financial year 2003-04 compared to Rs 2.992 billion in the year 2002-03.
It said gross profit of the company rose by 104.5 percent to Rs 1.385 billion in the year, compared to Rs 677.6 million in the same period last year.
It said operating expenses went up to 68.6 million this year compared to Rs 57.02 million in the same period last year and added administrative and general selling and distribution on the expenditure side has also gone up to Rs 38.5 million this year from Rs 21.6 million of last year.

During the year company’s dispatches have increased by four percent. “This increase in cement dispatches was due to 310 percent increase in company’s exports during the year.” But company’s local cement dispatches witnessed a decline of around 5 percent, he said and added the company operated above industry’s average capacity utilization during the year. Analysts said the company plans to increase its existing plant capacity by 1,200 tons per day (0.44mn tons) through debottlenecking. The total cost of this will be Rs 1 billion. The company has already achieved 400 tons per day increase and the remaining 800 tons per day is expected to be completed by February 2005.