Helicopters and marine services providers- Caverton Offshore Support Group, on Tuesday, kept to its promise, presenting its half-year unaudited financials to investors through the Nigerian Stock Exchange, wherein the company posted a profit, helped by management efficiency that saw administrative expenses drop by 61.17%, as against the previous half-year’s huge loss before and after tax. The bulk of this came from the significant reduction in exchange rate losses for the period under review.
Revenue for the period rose by a modest N969.841m or 10.6% from N9.142bn in 2016 to N10.112bn, boosted by the significant increase in income from helicopter charter from N182.866m to N570.896m. The core of its revenue however continued to come from helicopter/airplane contract, which alone yielded N9.384bn, up from N8.909bn in the corresponding first half of 2016.
Operating expenses was flat at N6.612bn, compared to the previous N6.051bn, swelled by the cost of aircraft rentals at N2.476bn, up from N2.462bn and the N2.139bn spent on crew salaries from N1.954bn in 2016. There were new expense heads during the period that did not exist last half year such as landing and navigational expenses of N92.937m; vessel charter hire, N63.875m and other direct costs- vessel which stood at N3.553m. This resulted in operating profit of N3.499bn, which was slightly better than prior half-year’s N3.091bn.
Administrative expense reduced by N3.077bn from N5.03bn to N1.953bn, the bulk of which was the employee benefit expense of N466.235m, down from N613.366m, depreciation was down by almost half from N818.263m to N453.196m. The biggest help came from the drop in exchange rate loss to N73.307m from a huge N2.89bn in the corresponding period of 2016, fuel and diesel expenses increased from N24.13m to N66.603m, while licence and levy rose to N6.871m from N1.592m.
Other operating income also fell by over 50% from N315.089m to N150.308m; bringing total operating profit to N1.697bn, from a loss of N1.624bn in the first half of 2016.
Finance cost, being interest on debts and borrowings grew marginally to N759.036m from N735.461m, leaving profit before tax at N938.026m, compared to N2.359bn loss previously.
After tax came to N594.584m profit as the company’s income tax expense soared to N343.442m, compared to N72.219m in prior year when loss after tax stood at N2.432bn.
The half year net profit translated to earnings per share of 18 kobo, a significant improvement over the previous loss of 73 kobo per share.