June 22, 2018
Jamaica Produces Group held its Annual General Meet (AGM) today. During his presentation, Mr. Jeffrey Hall, Managing Director of the Group, stated that JP operations can be broken down into two businesses: 1) JP Logistic & Infrastructure and 2) JP Food & Drink.
JP Logistics & Infrastructure Division is the Group’s largest division by assets, comprising Kingston Wharves (which operates a leading multi-purpose port serving the Caribbean region) and JP Shipping Services Limited, which is a leading freight-forwarded providing shipping services between Caribbean ports and the United Kingdom.
JP’s Food and Drink (FD) Division, on the other hand, is the largest contributor to the Groups revenue and consist of a vertically integrated portfolio of subsidiaries that are engaged in farming, food processing, distribution and retail of food and drink.
2017 Major Highlights
Chairman, Mr. Charles Johnson, gave a quick overview of the group’s 2017 annual performance. According to him, “For the year ended December 31, 2017 JP earned consolidated revenue of $16.2 billion and generated $662 million of Net Profit attributable to shareholders.” At the end of the year, the group shareholders’ equity amounted to $11.3 billion, reflecting an increase of 8% relative to the equity of the Group at the beginning of the year.
Net profit for 2017 reduced compared to 2016. However, the Chairman pointed out that “2016 profits exceeded the 2017 results because the 2016 result included gains related both to our acquisition of Kingston Wharves Limited ($2.9 billion) and the divestment of the Group’s holdings in Mavis Bank Coffee Factory Limited ($650 million)”
Q1 2018
However, the Group Managing Director believed that the Group has started reaping the benefits from strategies it employed over the last couple of years. As such, JP experienced 31% growth in revenue for 1Q 2018 due to improved performances from the JP Food, JP Logistics and Corporate Services segments. JP continues to experience growth in Europe due to the new technological advancement that extended the shelf life of its juices. This allows the firm’s operation in Holland to supply new markets with fresh juices. Export from Holland to other Scandinavian countries were up 33% in Q1 2018.
Trends
JP intends on capitalizing on trends that have developed over the last couple of years.“One trend we have observed is the decline in the long life sugary drink and a bias towards fresh and healthy.” Already positioned to take advantage of this trend, JP introduced to the European market a new type of juice that has all the health attributes with low sugar content -“Super Juice is a combination of spinach and apple that resulted in a 300% increase in profit in the business that does it,” according to Mr. Hall.
Forward Looking
JP Group is committed to the following strategic developments going forward
- Innovation in product and services
- Market leader in any business it engages in
- Improve margin enhancements
- Asset Optimization: ie using excess cash to make strategic acquisition
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