Tegel Group, New Zealand's biggest poultry producer, posted a 0.8 per cent gain in full-year pretax earnings as weaker pricing eroded the benefits of record sales.
Underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose to $75.6 million in the 53 weeks ended April 30, from $74.9 million in the year-earlier 52-week period, the Auckland-based company said in a statement. That's at the low end of the revised $75 million-to-$85 million forecast range the company gave in December, and below the $87.4 million projection in its prospectus. Sales rose 5.4 per cent to $614 million, against a prospectus forecast of $637 million.
Tegel shares sank to what was a record low on Dec. 15, when the company said a chicken glut was restraining domestic poultry prices and had combined with rising freight costs to squeeze margins. Since then the shares have continued to fall, reaching $1.05 last month, and recently traded at $1.15. Last month, chairman James Ogden unexpectedly quit the board effective immediately after less than a year overseeing the poultry company's direction as a publicly listed company, without an explanation.
The poultry group, taken public by private equity firm Affinity Equity Partners, first traded at $1.69 in May last year, having sold in the initial public offering at $1.55 apiece.
Affinity was the second buyout firm to own Tegel, having acquired the business in a leveraged buyout from Pacific Equity Partners and ANZ Capital in early 2011. PEP had, in turn, bought Tegel from HJ Heinz in 2005.
