KUALA LUMPUR: Felda Global Ventures Holdings Bhd (FGV) is expected to announce a new long-term strategic plan as part of its measures to cope with the changing global economic landscape.
The plan will see consolidation of FGV’s assets to drive operational excellence in its core business to leverage economies of scale in production and deliver sustainable returns to stakeholders beyond 2020.
“Nevertheless, I believe there are still tough decisions to be made before the end of this year as we begin the first phase of our new strategic plan,” its group president and chief executive officer Datuk Zakaria Arshad said in a statement yesterday.
He said the tough decisions would mean taking a comprehensive and systematic approach to rationalise FGV’s operations.
The group is expecting a full-year loss this year as its net loss for its third quarter ended September 30 widened to RM94.87 million from RM33.92 million in the corresponding period last year.
FGV is one of the world’s largest oil palm plantation operators. Its revenue also declined to RM4.19 billion from RM4.5 billion a year ago.
The decline in the quarter’s financial result was mainly due to a higher fair value charge on land lease agreement (LLA) of RM105 million compared with RM12 million previously, the group told Bursa Malaysia yesterday.
It also said the decline was due to an unusual stock loss amounting to some RM57 million incurred by a subsidiary of a jointly-controlled entity in Turkey, of which FGV does not have management control.
Zakaria said there were potential fraudulent acts that had been uncovered in the subsidiary and those were currently a subject of forensic audit.
He said FGV had started reviewing and communicating with the subsidiary’s management on the issue.
“In line with my call for greater transparency and good governance, we will continue our clean-up efforts and provide for potential impairments if any going forward,” Zakaria said.
For its nine-month period, FGV posted a net loss of RM98.19 million from a net profit of RM15.74 million in the same period last year.
However, its revenue rose to RM12.08 billion this year from last year’s RM11.41 billion.
Moving forward, Zakaria said, FGV was determined to continue improving its overall financial performance this year given the positive outcomes from the group’s transition plan announced in the previous quarter.
In the third quarter of this year, FGV’s crude palm oil (CPO) production recorded an increase of 19 per cent to 783,000 tonnes in tandem with the increase in fresh fruit bunches (FFB) yield to 4.14 tonnes per hectare from 3.9 tonnes per hectare in the preceding quarter.
FGV’s oil extraction rate (OER) also increased to 20.95 per cent in the current quarter compared with 20.40 per cent in the preceding quarter.
Zakaria said the strong FFB growth and improvement in OER was a result of the improvement in FGV’s oil palm age profile.
“We have reduced our administration cost by four per cent this quarter compared to the previous quarter and 32 per cent compared to the same quarter last year through several austerity measures throughout the organisation,” he said, adding that FGV was on track to achieve the RM100 million cost-savings target by end of this year.
Meanwhile, credit ratings agency Moody’s Investor Service said FGV would remain as market leader in terms of output and scale as its annual CPO production was more than three million tonnes over its last three fiscal years.
The agency said FGV’s CPO production was 500,000 tonnes over Sime Darby Bhd and more than four times larger than IOI Corp Bhd’s and Genting Plantations Bhd’s output.
“We expect FGV will maintain its production leadership position as Sime Darby’s efforts to increase its CPO production through improving harvesting yields and productivity will likely be realised after 12 months,” said Moody’s in its report yesterday.
Data compiled by Bloomberg showed that the consensus estimates on FGV’s earnings per share this year is 0.032 sen.
Three analysts have placed a “hold” call on FGV while four recommended a “sell” and two remained “neutral”.
FGV’s shares dropped 0.20 sen to close at RM1.69 on the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia yesterday.