Menu

AshakaCem, a subsidiary of Lafarge Africa, has reported that its 2016 after-tax profit fell by 27 percent owing to higher operating costs. The company said after-tax profit fell to N2.01 billion compared with N2.76 billion in the previous year.

The decline in profit was driven mainly by a significant increase in production and maintenance costs.

Revenue fell marginally by 0.3 percent to N17.35 billion as against N17.41 billion in 2015. The revenue decline resulted from lower sales of cement and lower income from coal mining and milling operations.

Just like AshakaCem, most cement companies in Nigeria have reported that their 2016 results were impacted by rising operating costs, caused by the country’s foreign exchange crisis and production outages due to prolonged gas shortages. Lafarge Africa, for instance, reported a loss before tax of N22.82 billion while Dangote Cement said its after-tax profit rose marginally by 2.9 percent to N186.62 billion.

AskakaCem said basic earnings per share fell to 90 kobo per share as against N1.23 per share the previous year. The company did not announce a dividend for the year under review.

Founded in 1974 and based in Gombe State, AshakaCem has a production capacity of over one million metric tonnes of cement per annum. The company is one of the four cement companies controlled by Larfarge Africa in Nigeria. The three other Lafarge-controlled companies are: Atlas Cement based in Rivers state, United Cement Company of Nigeria (Unicem) based in Cross River state, and LafargeWapco based in Ogun state.

AshakaCem’s stock was flat at N9.50 per share at the Nigerian Stock Exchange on Wednesday.