Guinness Nigeria Plc, on Friday reported results for the first nine months of its financial year through March 2018, with revenue rising 17.39% to ₦105bn from ₦90bn in the previous year, sustaining a growth momentum begun in June ending 2017, when the firm regained profitability.

The brewing giant said it benefited from a 58% reduction in net finance cost to ₦2.8bn from ₦6.7bn in 2017 due in part to the success of its ₦40bn rights issue. Also, it continued to seek to improve operational efficiency by driving out costs, which saw administrative expenses decline by 25%.

Commenting on the results, the Managing Director, Guinness Nigeria Plc, Mr. Peter Ndegwa said: “Against the backdrop of a challenging business environment as well as a slow and uneven economic recovery, we have delivered a positive performance with Net Sales of ₦105 billion for the period mainly driven by the volume growth.

“Over the period, we continued the robust implementation of our strategy around our product portfolio, offering Nigerians quality brands across a broad range of occasions, from non-alcoholic to beer and spirits – we remain the first and only Total Beverage Alcohol Company in Nigeria. We also continued to focus on driving our productivity agenda, improving effectiveness and delivering efficiencies across our operations, which partially mitigated the impact of high input inflation in the quarter.

“Administrative expenses reduced by 25% as a result of an increased focus on cost management while distribution expenses reduced by 11% driven by productivity initiatives such as improved truck utilisation and better truck turnaround. Marketing expenses increased by 16% as Guinness Nigeria continued to invest behind its brands over the period.

“We believe that our strategy and particularly the commercial execution are now yielding the desired outcomes. We will continue to focus on our strategy to deliver an improved performance in a challenging operating environment compounded by impending significant increases in taxes.”

Net profit rose to ₦5bn from a loss of ₦2.66bn in the prior year.

Updated: 30/4/2018  8:44PM