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Astra Agro anticipates improving earnings in second quarter
Last year’s decline in CPO prices has taken a toll on PT Astra Agro Lestari’s profit, reflecting in the company’s financial performance in the first quarter of this year.
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Fresh oil palm fruit (Shutterstock/File)
Publicly listed palm oil producer PT Astra Agro Lestari expects profits to pick up in the second quarter, following a sharp drop in the first quarter of the year.
The company’s head of treasury and investor relations, Rudy Limardjo, said the global palm oil market had been very encouraging lately as crude palm oil (CPO) prices had begun to show signs of recovery after falling sharply last year.
He said that, since the CPO price had slowly risen to an average of US$540 per ton in March, he hoped the trend would continue, so that the firm’s performance would improve.
Last year’s decline in CPO prices took a toll on Astra Agro Lestari’s profit, which reflected in the company’s financial performance in the first quarter of this year.
Its net profit plunged to Rp 37.41 billion ($2.62 million) in the first three months of this year, down 89.47 percent year-on-year (yoy). Meanwhile, revenue declined 4.8 percent yoy to Rp 4.23 trillion.
Rudy said the company’s sales of CPO and CPO derivatives actually increased in terms of volume, rising 24.7 percent yoy to 598,558 tons in the January-March period, mostly thanks to a 50-percent increase in CPO production.
