East African Portland Cement Records 42.1 Drop in Profits

East African Portland Cement Company has recorded a drop in its profits by 42.1 percent for the year ending June 2016.

The cement manufacturer recorded 4.2 billion shillings in profits which was a drop from 7.2 billion shillings in profits recorded last year at the same time.

The company attributed the drastic profit fall on the re-valuation gain of the assets which now stands at 15.7 billion shillings up from 9.5 billion shillings in 2015 and 2.2 billion shillings in 2014.

The value investment property for the company is at 6.2 billion shillings with a drop of 1.1 billion shillings from 7.3 billion shillings recorded last year.

The company’s total expenses increased to 3.25 billion shillings, this being an increase by 638 million shillings from what was recorded last year. The costs in terms of finance stood at 618.1 million shillings being an increase by 67.3 percent putting more heat on the company.

The company recorded an increase in revenue by 5.4 percent to 8.9 billion shillings while the operation losses increased from 577.5 million shillings last year to 1.6 billion shillings this year.

The government is a major shareholder in the company with 25 percent of the shares and the fall in profits just spell doom for government-owned companies.

The Portland Cement results comes after another company whose government has a stake, Mumias Sugar Company, reported a pretax loss of 6.06 billion shillings for the year ending June 2016.

The miller attributed the massive loss to “an acute shortage of quality sugarcane particularly in the fourth quarter and the widespread of sugarcane poaching” according to a statement released by the board.

Kenya Airways on the other hand, though recovering quickly from the loss of 27 billion shillings, recorded a loss of 4.8 billion shillings for the year. The airline has since embarked on a massive recovery program. Recently, Michael Joseph, a veteran in the telecommunication sector was appointed chairman of the board.