(Reuters) – SA’s Pioneer Food Group posted a 39 percent growth in half-year profit on Monday, sending the shares of the country’s second-biggest consumer goods-maker higher. Pioneer, which makes staple foods such as maize meal, pasta and juices, said headline earnings per share rose to 451 cents in the six months to end-March from 325 cents a year earlier.
Revenue increased by 8 percent to R9.45 billion ($798 million), despite long-running and almost daily energy constraints, the company said. Power utility Eskom, which has been facing supply shortages, has been implementing frequent blackouts.
The firm’s shares climbed 2.8 percent to R185.09 by 0915 GMT, outpacing a slightly higher JSE All-share index.
Pioneer, which is in the middle of a strategic review that includes disposing and closing its underperforming and non-core assets, plans to sell its Pepsi bottling plant in response to weak consumer spending in Africa’s most advanced economy.
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 will 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,” CEO Phil Roux said.
Pioneer divested from its poultry business, which was listed separately on the JSE in October as Quantum Foods.