- 2021 pre-tax profit rises 136 per cent to $137mn on two-thirds higher revenue of $433mn
- Earnings per share surge 164 per cent to 242¢
- Net cash of $218mn (443p a share) equates to half market capitalisation
- Annual dividend per share of 5¢, up from 1¢ in 2020
- Crude Palm Oil (CPO) price hits record high of $2,050 per metric tonne (mt) in March 2022, up from low of $440 per mt in 2019
The crude palm oil (CPO) price has been on a strong recovery since April 2020, driven by an imbalance between supply and demand. That’s because global consumption has been growing at an average rate of 7 per cent a year since 1990, rising eight-fold to almost 80mn tonnes, buoyed by rising income per capita in emerging economies. China, India and South-East Asia account for around 40 per cent of global demand.
However, new supply has failed to keep pace with rising consumption in recent years, a situation that has been exacerbated by low CPO prices in 2018 and 2019 which led to less planting. CPO, together with its related product, palm kernel oil, is derived from the fruit of the palm oil and is one of the four major vegetable oils, accounting for 35 per cent of total vegetable oil consumption. Non-food applications include use in bio-diesel (23 per cent of palm oil consumption) and oleochemicals. The quadrupling of the oil price since April 2020 is supportive of the use of CPO as feedstock for bio-diesel.