AIVC's international units witness noticeable growth in sales
Al Arafa for Investments & Consultancies (Arafa Holding - AIVC), the leading textiles focused investment company in Egypt reports its consolidated results as at the 31st of July of FY2011.
• Despite a 13.2% decline in the first quarter of FY 2011 compared to the same period of last year; Q2 FY 2011 witnessed a 22.3% growth compared to Q2 FY 2010 revenues. Accordingly, Consolidated Revenues during the first six months of FY2011 reached USD 134.6 million with a growth of 2.7% compared to the same period of last year. This successfully reflects AIVC's strategy to restore top line within its normal levels which smoothed down the impact of the political and social events in Egypt on its consolidated profits.
• Concrete's management did great efforts to retain its market share despite of the very tough conditions of the local retail market. By the 31st of July, Concrete recorded a y-o-y sales growth of 2.5%, after witnessing a y-o-y shrink of 9.6% during the first quarter of FY 2011. It is worth noting that Concrete's contribution to AIVC's consolidated top line was partially affected by the devaluation of its operational currency (EGP) against AIVC's reporting currency (USD).
• AIVC's international operations have also witnessed a noticeable growth in sales whereby the UK investment (Baird Group) recorded a 4.8% growth during H1 2011 compared to the same period of last year. Also, AIVC's Portugal-based investment (Egyptian Portuguese Co), started to pay off as it contributed revenues of USD 10.4 million during H1 2011 which is 2.5x revenues of the same period last year.
• By the end of H1 FY 2011; AIVC reported a Consolidated Gross Profit of USD 45.3 million versus USD 44.0 million for the same period last year which was a direct result of the growth in the top line.
• Consolidated EBITDA reached an amount of USD 11.2 million with a margin of 8.3% versus USD 13.1 million with a margin of 10.0% during the same period of last year. Also, Operating Profits registered USD 6.9 million representing a margin of 5.1% compared to USD 8.8 million for the same period of FY2010 with a margin of 6.7%. Profitability was mainly affected by an increase in the SG&A cost to accelerate the top line growth and retain customer base.