The Guinness Nigeria Plc on Tuesday submitted its report for the year ended June 30, 2016 with a record loss.
Guinness’s document which was filed with the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE, revealed that the company suffered a major loss as turn over declined by 14 percent from N118.49 billion as recorded in 2015 to N101.973 billion.
The company’s overall loss was also affected by the 72 percent drop in operating profit which plummeted from N15.667 billion to N4.415 billion.
Guinness’ year ended with a pretax loss of N2.347 billion while loss after tax stood at N2 billion.
This report marks the first full year loss the company has suffered in 30 years as the pretax profit stood at N10.795 billion against profit after tax which rolled in at N7.79 billion.
Mr. Peter Ndegwa, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Guinness Nigeria while speaking on the record loss noted that the continuous slide in value of naira along with the economic situation in the country impacted the company negatively.
“Our performance this year was impacted by two major factors, one being the very tough economic challenges around consumer spending, driving consumer preferences towards value brands across the sector, the other, and more significant factor being the effect of foreign exchange policy and the devaluation of the Naira. When you take out the impact of the latter, our underlying performance for the year was broadly in line with the prior year in spite of the pressure on the top line.”
The Chairman, Guinness Nigeria Plc, Mr Babatunde Savage also noted: “Despite the continuing deterioration in the operating environment, the Board is pleased to note that our core brands of Guinness FES and Malta Guinness are in growth and we now have a strong participation in the growing value segment of the market through Satzenbrau and Dubic. We have also started to see early signs that our decisions to acquire the distribution rights in Nigeria to the International Premium Spirits brands of Diageo and to invest in local capacity for spirits manufacturing are the right ones for the business.”