Sea Harvest expects lower earnings

JSE-LISTED and vertically integrated fishing company Sea Harvest expects its interim basic earnings per share (Eps) to decline by at least 31 percent as it absorbs the costs related to acquiring Viking Group. Sea Harvest Group and a consortium of black-owned companies announced in June that they purchased the fishing businesses of Viking for R885 million.

The transaction was to be satisfied through a combination of cash on hand, bank facilities, an issue of Sea Harvest shares and vendor funding. The group advised its shareholders on Friday that it expected to report basic Eps of between 46 cents and 50c a share for the six months to end June, representing a decrease of between 31and 25 percent as compared to the Eps of 67c reported last year.

However, its headline earnings for the period were expected to increase by between 0 and 3 percent, to between R110.7m and R114m, compared to the headline earnings of R110.7m reported last year. Sea Harvest said it also expected its basic headline earnings per share (Heps) to decline during the period.

“Basic headline earnings per share are expected to decrease by between 20 and 13 percent, to between 45c and 49c a share, compared to the Heps of 56.6c a share reported for the six months to end June 2017,” the group said.

It added that the decrease in Eps and Heps is mainly attributed to an increase in the weighted average number of shares in issue (Wanos) due to the annualised effect of the shares issued at listing on March 23 last year being included in the Wanos calculation for only a portion of the period in 2017. Its interim results will be out on August 28.