Guinness Nigeria Reports First Annual Loss in 30 Years

Guinness Nigeria Plc on Tuesday reported a loss for the year ended June 30, 2016.

The document filed with the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) revealed that turnover declined by 14 percent from N118.49 billion recorded in 2015 to N101.973 billion in 2016. While operating profit dropped by 72 percent from N15.667 billion to N4.415 billion.

The company ended the year with a pretax loss of N2.347 billion and loss after tax of N2 billion, making it its first full-year loss in 30 years, compared with pretax profit of N10.795 billion and profit after tax of N7.79 billion recorded in 2015.

Speaking to reporters, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Guinness Nigeria Plc, Mr. Peter Ndegwa, said that the challenging economic environment coupled with Naira devaluation had a profound impact on Guinness Nigeria’s overall performance.

“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.”

Speaking in the same vein, Chairman, Guinness Nigeria Plc, Mr Babatunde Savage, said: “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.”