Unimilk posts FY 2009 net loss of 195 million roubles

Russian leading dairy producer, Unimilk, has posted a FY 2009 net loss of 195 million roubles under IFRS.

The bottom line is a sharp turnaround from the FY 2008 net loss of 2.28 billion roubles, with FY 2009 EBITDA also jumping 124.3% year on year to 4.69 billion roubles from 2.09 billion roubles a year earlier, while FY revenues were up 7% to 42.99 billion roubles.

According to Andrey Beshnelnitsky, CEO at Unimilk, such a positive FY 2009 performance was the result of improved synergies and highlighted the company’s improved market share as well as growth of higher margin products.

“We managed to grow in 2009 significantly faster than the market due to a consistent realization of our strategy aimed at our brands development, a single commercial policy, specialization and modernization of our production sites.

The company is steadily increasing its market share, which is up 1.2% in natural terms and 1.8% in financial terms. We are especially happy because we are growing not only in our traditional market segment, but also are actively developing in the new highly marginal product categories. The high speed of decision making at the management level, expanding our partnership network and introduction of innovations has made our growth profitable both on the gross profit level, which was up 25.5%, and on EBITDA level, which rose 124.3% in 2009.”