Croatia's Podravka Group achieves record quarterly profits | Progresiv
Croatian food and pharmaceutical company Podravka has achieved net profit of 10.8 million euros in the first quarter of its financial year, up 14.8% year-on-year. 
The double-digit growth was mainly due to the performance of the group's product range, assisted by control of operating costs.
Revenues at Podravka Group increased 2.9% to 137.5 million euros, marking the first time sales revenues for the first quarter surpassed the billion-kuna mark.
The group's Food segment saw 3.3% growth to 109.7 million euros in revenue, of which own brands accounted for 102.1 million euros, or 2.1% more than a year earlier.
Within Food, Baby Food, Sweets and Snacks saw the highest growth (+11.5%), followed by Fish (10.8%) and Culinary (2.9%).
The Pharmaceuticals segment achieved 27.2 million euros in revenue (+1.4%).
Geographically, the highest sales growth was recorded in the Western Europe and Overseas (+6.8%) region, to 16.0 million euros, followed by Eastern Europe (+4.8%), to 8.8 million euros.
However, the Adria region, which is the company's largest, posted 3.7% growth to 94.9 million euros.
Podravka said that focus for the rest of the year will be on the traditional markets where the group is already strongly positioned, on investment in new product development, and on further efficient cost management.
During 2019, Podravka expects the payment of part of the border debt of Agrokor (now Fortenova Group) for the calendar year 2018.
As of 31 March 2019, receivables amounted to 6.5 million euros, of which 3.3 million euros relates to the border debt. (www.esmmagazine.com)
