KARACHI, Jan 5: Majority of sugar mills have thus far posted bitter results for the year ended September 31, 2005. It is the reporting season for sugar mills and the financial figures are trickling in.

Some two dozen companies have already announced the year end results, Crescent Sugar; Adam Sugar; Habib Sugar; Faran Sugar; Mehran Sugar and some others have declared profits, while numerous have run into losses. But the significant feature of some of the results that come at hand is that there is a visible decline in profits and even some companies have drifted from profit into losses. A few cases: Mehran Sugar showed profit after tax at Rs7 million which was lower than last year’s PAT at Rs12 million; Sanghar Sugar ran into loss of Rs55 million for the year under review, from profit at Rs4 million the previous year. Profit after tax at Faran Sugar dipped at Rs29 million from Rs62 million the year ago. PAT at Adam Sugar dropped to Rs21 million from Rs40 million last year.

Since all results declared are not at hand, it is possible to have missed companies that made higher profit for the year under review. But there are some 40 sugar companies listed on the sugar & allied sector of the stock exchanges. And some have still the end of the current month to reveal their financial figures. The general trend, nonetheless, appears sluggish.

The chairman’s review and directors’ report of companies’ annual accounts would perhaps describe the conditions during the year ended September 30, 2005 that pushed sugar mills into lower profits or losses. From the investors’ point of view, sugar shares are not much in demand and only few of the stalwarts see much of trading or significant change in values. Paid-up capital of all sugar mills listed at the Karachi Stock Exchange combined amounts to Rs5.7 billion. For all of the year 2005 (Jan-Dec), around 108 million shares in sugar scrips came up for trading, which amounts to just about a quarter of any ordinary day’s aggregate turnover of 400 million shares at the KSE.