Sea Harvest earnings boosted by fishing and cheese

JSE-LISTED fishing company Sea Harvest Group is expecting to report double-digit growth in earnings for the year to end December, boosted by its fishing operations and Ladismith Cheese Company.

Its headline earnings could increase by between 42 and 52 percent, to be between R395 million and R422m, up from R278m compared to last year.

“The group’s financial performance for the year to end December has benefited from a strong performance of the South African fishing operation and a pleasing result from the Ladismith

Cheese operation,” the group said in a statement yesterday.

Sea Harvest’s subsidiary Cape Harvest Food Group acquired the Western Cape-based Ladismith Cheese for R527m in 2018.

The acquisition of Ladismith Cheese was meant to provide Sea Harvest with an ideal platform to build on in the dairy sector through the development and acquisition of additional dairy and allied beverage products.

Sea Harvest is an internationally recognised fishing and food business, with operations in South Africa and Australia and a presence in 22 countries.

The group’s primary species are

Cape hake, mackerel, pilchards, anchovies and a variety of farmed species from South Africa, and Shark Bay king and tiger prawns from Australia.

Its fleet consists of a total of 53 vessels of which 42 operate in South Africa and 11 in Western Australia.

In the upcoming results, the group also expected to report basic headline earnings per share (Heps) and basic earnings per share (Eps) of between 143 cents a share and 153c during the period.

The group said this would represent an increase of between 28 and 37 percent compared to the Heps of 111.5c and between 27 and 36 percent compared to the Eps of 112.8c reported last year,” the group said.

The group also informed its shareholders that the weighted average number of shares in issue for the year to end December increased to 276.37 million from 249.2 million.

“An additional 19.23 million shares were issued on July 2, 2018, as part of the Viking purchase consideration and 21.43 million shares were issued on January 7, 2019, in the form of a vendor consideration placement in connection with the Ladismith Cheese acquisition,” the group said.

Sea Harvest expects to release its year results on March 2. Its shares closed 1.10 percent higher at R14.66 on the JSE yesterday.