An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd has closed the first half of the fis­cal pe­ri­od 2022 with Prof­it Af­ter Tax (PAT) of $67.6 mil­lion, an in­crease of $12 mil­lion or 21.7 per cent over the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od in 2021.

Ac­cord­ing to the Group’s sum­ma­ry con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments rev­enue for the first six months of the fis­cal year end­ed June 30, 2022 was $460 mil­lion, an in­crease of $89.6 mil­lion or 24.1 per cent over the same pe­ri­od of last year.

These re­sults are in­dica­tive of im­prove­ment in eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty since the re­moval of COVID-19 re­stric­tions, the com­pa­ny said.

It not­ed lo­cal rev­enue of $264.1 mil­lion rep­re­sent­ed an in­crease of 19 per cent over the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od in 2021 as on-premise trade (bars, ho­tels, en­ter­tain­ment cen­tres) re­cov­ered in the sec­ond quar­ter. In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, while some mar­kets had a more mod­er­ate re­cov­ery, rev­enue grew by 29 per cent dur­ing the same pe­ri­od from $137.8 mil­lion to $178 mil­lion.

All ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets re­port­ed growth, ex­cept for the UK, which is ex­pect­ed to re­bound im­mi­nent­ly, the com­pa­ny added.

Prof­itabil­i­ty im­proved com­pared to the same pe­ri­od of last FY with a gross prof­it mar­gin of 51 per cent, com­pared to 48 per cent (2021); an op­er­at­ing mar­gin of 19.5 per cent com­pared to 17.9 per cent (2021); and a Prof­it Be­fore Tax (PBT) mar­gin of 21.4 per cent com­pared to 20 per cent (2021).

The com­pa­ny said this per­for­mance was achieved de­spite sus­tained pan­dem­ic-in­duced changes in buy­ing pat­terns, glob­al sup­ply chain con­straints and geopo­lit­i­cal shocks which re­sult­ed in chal­lenges with lo­gis­tics, ship­ping, and wide­spread in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures.

It added ro­bust man­age­ment of ex­pens­es and im­prove­ments in pro­duc­tion ef­fi­cien­cies con­tributed to over­all im­prove­ments in prof­itabil­i­ty notwith­stand­ing these draw­backs.

“In spite of mar­ket volatil­i­ty, grow­ing in­fla­tion, and ex­ter­nal shocks which will con­tin­ue in­to the fore­see­able fu­ture, the Group has a pos­i­tive out­look for the rest of FY 2022.

“We are con­fi­dent our per­for­mance will con­tin­ue along this cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry, with sup­port of stake­hold­ers and on­go­ing ded­i­ca­tion of em­ploy­ees,” the state­ment said.

The board rec­om­mend­ed an in­ter­im div­i­dend of $0.10 per share (2021: $0.09 per share).