Flying Cement Co posts a profit rise of 23% during 1HFY23-24

Flying Cement Co Ltd has released detailed interim financial statements for the 1HFY23-24, which ended 31 December 2023. The company earned a net profit after tax of PKR170.95m (US$0.612m) when compared with PKR138.85m in the 1HFY22-23, up by 23.1 per cent YoY due to increased sales (PKR2.36bn) during this period. Yet, it incurred a higher borrowing cost of PKR112m and taxation of PKR74.38m in the accounting period.  

Outlook
Ongoing challenges remain higher energy costs, transportation costs, inflation and borrowing costs. Economic growth has been severely impacted by the pressures of ongoing political uncertainty and macroeconomic setbacks, resulting in higher inflation and interest rates. These factors have negatively affected the sales and capacity utilisation of most of the major industrial sectors. Since the state of the economy improved after the caretaker government took certain corrective measures, the value of the Pakistani rupee has increased, and inflationary pressures slightly have fallen over the period.

Consequently, the economic activities have risen, resulting in increased sales for the company. The company is quite hopeful of improving domestic sales due to the expected revival of the economy. In the future, potential challenges can include:
• an increase in the cost of production caused by high inflation
• increasing coal prices in international markets
• expected hikes in electricity and gas rates and geopolitical uncertainty.