High palm oil prices in 2021 has allowed PT Astra Agro Lestari Tbk. (AALI) to post a 29.3 percent rise in net revenues to Rp 24.3 trillion in 2021 despite a 6.6 percent drop in production of its Fresh Fruit Bunch (FFBs).
Astra Agro Lestari Director Mario Casimirus Surung Gultom talking to journalists at a press conference on the company’s Annual General Meeting of Shareholders on Wednesday (13/4) announced that the company posted a 136.6 percent rise in net profit to Rp. 1.97 trillion last year and a 29.3 percent rise in net revenues to Rp. 24.3 trillion.
“The rise in selling prices is caused by a rise in the average selling price of CPO (crude palm oil),” Gultom said, adding that the average price of CPO in 2021 rose by 32.2 t over the previous year, to reach Rp 11,294 the kilogram.
He said that the average selling prices of kernel oil also rose by 67.4 percent over 2020 to reach Rp 7,305 in 2021.
The company’s operational profit also increased by 86.2 percent to Rp 3.43 trillion
Astra Agro’s capital expenditure (capex) in 2021 rose by 23 percent from the 2020 level to reach Rp 1.2 trillion. “The majority of the capex was used for replanting and the maintenance of cops that are not yet productive. The rest is used for infrastructure repairs and replacement of machineries at the plants,” Gultom said.
He detailed that last year’s capex was for plantations at Rp 466 billion, non-plantations expenses at Rp 459 billion and for factories at Rp 331 billion. For this year, he said the company planned to allocate around Rp 1.3 trillion for its capital expenditures.
“It would not be too different from the capex last year. Any addition will partly be used to repay debt that are due in October 2022,” he said.
Speaking at the same occasion, Astra Agro Lestari President Director Santosa said that the company’s production of FFBs in 2021 was 6.6 percent lower than in 2020, at 4.33 million tons. He attributed the decline in production to the declining productivity of the crops following the long dry period in 2019.
Santosa said that on the other hand, the purchase of FFBs from outside the company grew by 25.6 percent last year to reach 3.27 million ton in 2021, bringing the company’s total production of CPO to 1.47 million ton or 3.1 percent up from 2020.
He said that the production of FFBs in the first quarter of 2021 was lower than in the same period last year but gave no figure. He only aired hopes that production would improve in the second half o this year.
“Looking at the conditions of production, hopefully the conditions can become better compared to last year,” Santosa said.
Santosa estimated that even though the prices of palm oil were currently quite high but the production costs, especially for fertilizer, were also higher and therefore the difference between the revenues and expenditures would not be too different than last year.
He said that the price of fertilizer had already undergone increases of between 75 and 80 percent per kilogram.
The obligation for the company to sell part of its palm oil domestically at a government set price that was lower than market prices in the first two months of the year would be reflected in the company’s finance for the first quarter of this year, Santosa said. The obligation was lifted in March.
A large part of the company’s revenue came from CPO and its derivative products, reaching Rp 22.02 trillion or up 26.77 percent compared to 2020. Palm Kernel Oil and its derivatives and other products each contributed Rp 2.20 trillion and Rp 96.49 billion.
Besides managing 286,720 hectares of oil palm plantations, Astra Agro also operates 32 processing plant with an installed capacity of 1,750 tons of FFBs per hour, two CPO refineries with a total capacity of 3,000 tons of CPO per day and one PKO processing plant with a capacity of 400 tons per day