August 9, 2002	Friday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 29,1423

KARACHI, Aug 8: ICI Pakistan posted after tax profit at Rs227 million for the six months ended June 30, 2002.

The results announced by the board on Thursday morning fell generally in line with analysts’ expectations and came closest to First Capital Securities’ forecast of Rs228 million in after tax earnings.

The bottomline compared well with the after tax loss of Rs131 million returned by ICI in the corresponding period last year. But most of the improvement stemmed from 61 per cent decrease in ‘financial & other charges’, to Rs357 million from Rs911 million in the same period last year. The company had suffered huge foreign exchange losses on foreign currency loans last year, which had been averted in the period under review due to a stable rupee/dollar parity.

Net sales improved 8 per cent to Rs5,566 million for the six months to end-June 2002, though cost of sales rose by 14 per cent to Rs4,528 million, cutting out the gross margin to 18.6 per cent, from 23 per cent.