Given last week’s announcement that the FG’s product pricing template will now reflect fx rates sourced from secondary sources, a slowdown to topline growth is anticipated.
In Q1 2016, sales were up 38% Year-on-Year (y/y) to N22.7bn while PBT and PAT were also up 30% y/y and 22% y/y respectively. The topline growth and a 30% y/y rise in other income more than offset the negative impact of a gross margin contraction of -128bp y/y to 17% and a 30% y/y rise in opex, leading to the PBT growth.
Other income continued to improve on the back of a recovery in rental income. Sequentially, while sales were up 20% q/q, PBT and PAT were up by much wider margins of 62% q/q and 235% q/q respectively. While a gross margin expansion of +211bp y/y was the primary driver behind the PBT growth, Mobil posted no income/loss on the OCI line vs. a loss of –N679m in Q4 2015. Compared with estimates, sales and PAT beat by 53% and 86% respectively.