Investors
Overview of Chairman’s Statement at the 58th Annual General Meeting
of the Company.
On behalf of the Board, I welcome you all to the 58th Annual General Meeting of the Company and feel pleased to present the annual review of the Company's performance and the audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2009. The year 2009 was yet another landmark in the history of the Company. The record operational performance, in terms of production, sales and profitability were achieved under the incredible guidance of our management team despite, global economic downturn, constant power crises, bleak law and order situation in the north of the country and persistent inflationary pressure that negatively impacted the business. The Company business witnessed its record level with net turnover of Rs. 6.429 billion signifying a growth of 26% over last year. The Gross profit was recorded at Rs. 2.672 billion with improvement of 23% over previous year. Operating profit increased from Rs. 691.095 million to Rs. 848.205 million also showing an increase of 23% as compared to previous year. Profit after taxation was Rs. 585.512 million compared to Rs. 477.775 million of last year. It is also worth mentioning here that our Company achieved return on equity of 29.86% and earnings per share of Rs. 77.45. The Company has an effective cash flow management system in place whereby cash inflows and outflows are projected on regular basis. The Board is satisfied that there are no short or long term financial constraints at the close of the period. Based on the performance and progress made by the Company, your Directors have decided to recommend a final dividend of Rs.12 per share and also proposed that Rs. 494 Million to be transferred to general reserve to utilize for further growth of the business in the coming years. Our Retail division continues to grow with the current setup along with the new stores having achieved a growth of 22%. In order to sustain this growth and to provide friendly and modem atmosphere in the stores, an amount of Rs. 97.6 million has been spent to open twenty seven new stores at key business locations. Much of the expansion was focused on the big format stores concept. As part of our strategy to exit from low turnover and non profitable stores, we closed a total of twenty nine stores which were under minimum benchmark.
