FISHING CONGLOMERATE
Lucky stars line up for big Oceana performance
Fishing conglomerate Oceana Group showed the benefits of running a tight ship — and angling in on specialist offshore niches — when it hiked the dividend for the year to end-September by a whopping 28% to 469c per share. Financial results released on Thursday showed Oceana, one of the biggest fishing enterprises in the world, fattening its operating margin to 21% from 17% in the previous financial year. Not only did it achieve favourable pricing for its seafood products in most markets, but CEO Francois Kuttel reported material cost efficiencies in production, logistics, warehousing and freight, as well as improved efficiencies through the finance shared services centre and the renegotiation of key contracts. Revenue surged 34% to R8.24bn with profit after tax jumping 49% to R988m. While cost of sales was up 32% to just more than R5bn, Oceana — which has Lucky Star canned pilchards as its flagship brand — managed to limit the increase in marketing expenditure to 17% at R599m and red...
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