Monde Nissin Corp., makers of Lucky Me! Noodles and the popular Skyflakes crackers, still reported a loss after tax of P625 million in 2023, sharply lower than prior year’s loss of P13.01 billion attributed to the non-cash, non-operating impairment of assets in its vegetable meat business.
The company reported booking P10.1 billion after-tax impairment loss at its vegetable meat business offset only partly by P1.3 billion in guaranty asset gains.
Henry Soesanto, chief executive officer, said its meat alternative business, led by the Quorn brand, faced a challenging environment last year that forced a further impairment offset only by the financial support offered by Monde Nissin’s controlling family shareholders.
It was “such that retained earnings were minimally impacted at the level of the listed parent company,” Soesanto said.
“We believe a continued focus on cost reduction and improving efficiencies, aided by better trends in input costs, will reduce the risks of further substantial impairments. Despite these continued category headwinds, our food service business continues to perform well, showing 6 percent revenue growth for the year. We expect a high single-digit revenue decline and approximately EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) breakeven for the first quarter. Our input costs continue to improve, and we expect this to be reflected in our margins as the year progresses,” he reported.
With the family’s support, attributable core income grew 15 percent to P7.61 billion from prior year’s P6.58 billion, mainly on the strong performance of its Asia Pacific branded food business.
Revenue grew 8 percent to P80.17 billion from P73.94 billion.
In the fourth quarter, core income of P1.92 billion almost doubled from previous year’s P958 million.
Net sales of its branded business rose 12 percent to P65.94 billion in 2023 from P58.55 billion.
Its vegetable meat business fell 4 percent to P14.22 billion from P15.39 billion.
The company has set aside P7.21 billion as capital expenditure this year, almost double the previous year’s P3.64 billion the bulk of which will fortify capacity.
Only P1 billion had been allocated for its vegetable meat business as capex.
