Palm Oil Giant Wilmar’s Profits Soar While Orangutans Suffer
Wilmar, one of the biggest players in the palm oil industry, is responsible for unimaginable amounts of forest destruction… It sickens me to think of the number of orangutans who have been killed as a result of their activities… If there were such a thing as a class action lawsuit on behalf of the orangutans, Wilmar would get life without parole… Read more about Wilmar here and here. ~ Rich
Source: Bloomberg.com
Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) — Wilmar International Ltd., the world’s biggest palm oil trader, said fourth-quarter profit jumped fivefold after prices rose to a record and it made acquisitions to benefit from increased demand.
Net income climbed to $234 million, or 5.15 cents a share, from $43.9 million, or 1.89 cents a share, a year earlier, the Singapore-based company said today in a statement to the stock exchange. Sales rose to $6.5 billion from $2.2 billion.
Wilmar, Singapore’s second-most valuable listed company, supplies about 45 percent of retail cooking oil in China. The Asian nation imported 25 percent more vegetable oils last year as increased incomes stoked demand, boosting palm oil prices.
“Wilmar is in a strong position to benefit from rising Chinese demand,” Ben Santoso, a plantation analyst at DBS Vickers Securities (Singapore), said before the results were announced.
Wilmar is the best performer of the 30 companies on the Straits Times Index over the past 12 months, more than doubling, compared with the benchmark’s 2 percent advance. The stock retreated 1.4 percent to S$4.86 yesterday.
For the full year, Wilmar’s profit rose to $580.4 million, or 12.78 cents a share, from $215.9 million, or 9.31 cents a share, in 2006. That compares with the median forecast of $524.4 million, according to 12 analysts’ estimates tracked by Bloomberg.
