Lafarge Africa Plc 3 Months 2017 Financial Summary

3 Months LAFARGE AFRICA PLC
	2017 N'000	2016 N'000	change	Year End
Revenue	81,310,510	52,420,896	55%	December
Profit/Loss before taxation	9,446,052	2,215,662	526%
Profit/Loss for the period	5,161,086	1,872,998	376%
Issued Shares (Units)	5,464,885,270	4,596,219,380
Basic Earnings Per Shares (Kobo)	92.00	19.00	584%
Last total dividend paid (Kobo)

Selling & Marketing expenses increased by 8.3% this was as a result of other selling and marketing expenses that increased by 35.79% from #897million to #1.2billion.

The cost of sales was 74.29% of revenue in Q1 2017 while it was 85.11% in Q1 2016, this is an improvement from last year and it impacted positively the gross profit.

The company could not keep administrative expenses down as it grew by 32.69% courtesy of administrative expenses that went up by 55.17%.

The Finance income increased by 129.20%, this was spurred by the interest on loan receivable that jumped by 477.24%.

In the same vein, Finance expense increased by 104% due to interest on borrowing that accelerated to #4.2billion from #2.1billion which implied a growth of 100%.

Worthy of note is the Forex gain of by the Company it grew by 102.17% from #4.6Billion in 2016 to #9.3billion in 2017.

The reaction of the market was impressive as the stock gained 10.24% today to close #50.71k.

We expect manufacturing sector of the Market to have a good year, since there is relative stability in the FX Market and cost of energy too is within range, with the recovery plan still been pursue by the FGN, we belief the Capital Market should recover from the 3 years slide since 2014.