PT Austindo Nusantara Jaya Tbk (ANJ) reported its operational performance for the first nine months of 2017 on Tuesday, October 31, 2017 that showed earnings jump by 19.8 percent to $109,013,000 while its net profit soared by 523.44 percent compared to the nine months of 2016 to reach $30.9 million.
In presenting the company’s financial performance report for the January to and including September 2017 ANJ Finance Director Lucas Kurniawan, attributed the higher earnings, to higher average CPO prices, higher sales of Crude Palm Oil and Palm Kernel Oil and profit from the sales of shares in PT Agro Muko, DGI and SGSS.
In March, the company sold a 10.87 percent stake in PT Agro Muko worth $44.3 million and retained a 5 percent stake. In September, its sold all its stake in PT Darajat Geothermal Indonesia (DGI) for $30.1 million and its 5 percent stake in PT Star Energy Geothermal Suoh Sekincau (SGSS) for $325,000.
“The average price of palm oil in 2017 has been quite supportive, compared to last year,” Kurniawan said, adding that the profit was also buoyed by profits from the company’s investment sales.The average selling price for the first nine months of this year was at $617 per metric ton for CPO and $478 per metric ton for PKO. The corresponding figures for last year were at respectively $578 per ton and $486 per ton.
ANJ President Director Istini T. Siddharta declined to speculate on prices for next year but said that “the prediction for 2018 is that it will rise slightly, not a steep rise.”
Production of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) rose by 9.2 percent to reach 515,263 metric tons because of newly producing plantations in Kalimantan and the significant recovery of company plantations in Belitung which had suffered from the 2015 El Nino weather phenomenon. Weaker production was registered in the North Sumatra I area because of the extended drought that had hit the area in 2016.
CPO and Palm Kernel production also rose respectively by 19.9 percent and 10.5 percent to reach 149,665 metric tons and 30,421 metric tons by end of the third quarter.
Kurniawan also said that the company’s EBITDA also rose to $79.1 million in the first three quarters of the year compared to $23.8 million in the same period in the previous year. Its margin rose from 26.1 percent to 72.5 percent in the first nine months of this year.
In the first three quarters of the year, the company’s assets rose by 11.9 percent to reach $587.7 million, as with earnings, primarily because of profits from the investment sales. Liabilities also rose by 18.4 percent to $201.8 billion because of rising owed taxes in line with the rise in pre-tax profit,
Kurniawan also said that the company in September started the construction of plants for producing CPO and Palm Kernel Oil (PKO) in West Papua that were expected to come on stream in the third quarter of 2019, in time for the first palm oil production of the plantations there.
Company expenditure this year so far also included the start of the construction of a edamame processing factory in Jember, East Java to process fresh edamame into frozen edamame. The plant is expected to become operational in the third quarter of 2018 although exports would only start sometimes in the first half of 2019 after all food safety certifications had been secured.
With the sale of the stakes in FDGI and SGSS, ANJ’s energy business “will focus on renewable energy from CPO waste,” Kurniawan said.
ANJ President Director Istini said that the company intended to stay in the bioenergy sector because it was linked to the company’s palm oil production. She, however, added that the company’s electricity production would be for internal usage only as selling it to the state utility company PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara was for the moment unprofitable. Excess electricity, she added, would be used to help local small industries.