Shares rise as profit jumps 39%

PIONEER Food Group posted 39 percent growth in half-year profit yesterday, sending the shares of the country’s secondbiggest consumer goods producer higher. Pioneer, which makes staple foods such as maize meal, pasta and juices, said headline earnings per share (EPS) rose to 451c in the six months to March from 325c a year earlier. Headline EPS is the main profit measure in South Africa that excludes one-off items. Revenue increased by 8 percent to R9.45 billion, despite energy constraints, the company said. The company’s shares closed up 5.61 percent at R190.10, outpacing a slightly higher all share index. Pioneer, which is in the middle of a strategic review that includes disposing of and closing its underperforming and non-core assets, plans to sell its Pepsi bottling plant in response to weak consumer spending. The groceries division, which accounts for more than a quarter of revenue, grew 9 percent but was weighed down by losses from Pepsi, in a country where rival drink Coca-Cola has 80 percent of the market share. Pioneer said it would stop distributing Pepsi in July. Losses from Pepsi in the first-half of its financial year were equivalent to the whole of the previous year, the firm said. “The brand just has not resonated,” chief executive Phil Roux said. Pioneer had divested from its poultry business, which was listed separately in Johannesburg in October as Quantum Foods.