Honeywell Flour Mills Plc: A tough year

By Folakemi Emem-Akpan

Introduction

Honeywell Flour Mills Plc went the way of most other Nigerian companies in 2023, recording lower turnover. It went one step further and recorded downright end of the year losses. Because of the losses, the company did not have good profitability ratios and seems to be floundering. All in all, it was a tough year for the company.

Growth indices

Honeywell followed the general rule of earning more income in 2023 than it did in 2022. The growth in gross earnings, at 8.0 percent, was however lower than most other companies recorded. Gross earnings stood at N147.3 billion, a little higher than N136.4 billion in the prior year. Even though the company was careful to curtail cost of sales, it couldn’t quite do the same for operating expenses (inclusive of advertising and promotion, distribution, administrative and interest expenses). These grew much faster collectively in 2023 than in 2022.

For the second year in a row, Honeywell recorded a loss rather than a pre-tax profit. Loss before tax obligations for 2023 stood at a staggering N8.9 billion, a deeper loss than the N170 million pre-tax loss recorded in the prior year. After-tax loss was N260 million for the 2023 financial year, still a loss, but better than the N980 million loss recorded in 2022.

Total assets deployed by the company for the 2023 year grew to N165 billion, 11 per cent more than the N148.7 billion assets deployed in 2022. Meanwhile, shareholders’ funds declined by 27.5 per cent to N32.0 billion in the review year.

Profitability ratios

Not only did Honeywell record losses instead of profitability on a stand-alone analysis basis for the 2023 financial year, all parameters also showed a regression when compared to its preceding years’ result. First to achieve a regression was the profit margin of the company. Instead of a profit margin, there was a loss margin of 6.0 percent, meaning that for every N100 earned by the company in the course of the year, N6.00 of it translated to loss. This is as compared to a loss of 10 kobo in 2022.

Also to record a decline was return on assets (ROA). Loss on assets was 5.4 percent, as compared to a loss on assets of 0.1 percent in the erstwhile year. For the 2023 financial year, Honeywell deployed equity valued at N32.9 billion and for every N100 equity deployed, the company made an after-tax loss of 78 kobo.

The operating margin (which measures what proportion of turnover a company spends on operations and which must be kept as low as possible without compromising standards) was one of the reasons for the company’s bad results for the year. This is because such operating margin was 6.9 percent, higher and worse than the 5.2 percent recorded in the prior year.

Staff matters

As regards staff matters, pre-tax loss per employee stood at N10.9 million on the average. This is as compared to the N204 million pre-tax loss employees contributed on the average to the company’s pre-tax loss in 2022.

Average staff cost then increased significantly to N8.84 million from N5.99 million within the course of 12 months. This means that there was a N2.85 million addition to what an employee earned (on the average) between 2023 and 2022.

Perhaps, because it increased its staff costs, Honeywell did not succeed in deflating its staff costs as a proportion of income earned. Staff costs as a portion of turnover grew to 4.4 per cent in 2023, higher than 3.6 percent in 2022.

Other ratios

At 0.9 times, Honeywell’s current ratio was a little lower than the industry average for 2023. What this means is that for every N1.00 of short-term obligations, the company had 90 kobo in short-term assets, and was not fully able to meet short term debts from short term assets.

Having a debt-to-equity ratio of 4.0 shows that the company is using N4 of liabilities in addition to each N1.00 of stockholders’ equity. In other words, the company is using N5.00 of total capital for every N1.00 of equity capital, higher than it did in 2022.

Honeywell Vs Flour Mills: Still a loss

We have established that Honeywell did not improve its lot when its results are compared on a year on year basis. We can also establish that Honeywell did not compete favourably against other companies in the flour milling business for the 2023 FY. A comparison against Flour Mills buttresses this point.

While Flour Mills is easily the bigger of the two companies (in fact, it is the parent company of Honeywell), a bigger size does not automatically translate into better profitability. For the 2023 review year, Flour Mills was also the clear leader in terms of performance. Of six profitability ratios examined, Flour Mills led in all.

Turnover growth rate

For the 2023 financial year, Flour Mills had a turnover growth rate of 32.8 percent, as compared to Honeywell’s turnover growth rate of 8 per cent for the same period under review. Analysis shows that Flour Mills was the winner in this respect.

Pre-tax profit growth rate

For the year, Flour Mills’ profit before tax grew by a mere 1.5 percent. Yet, this was much better than the 5,074 percent decline Honeywell recorded. However, it is also important to note that while Flour Mills witnessed an actual growth, Honeywell had a pre-tax loss of N8.9 million.

Between turnover and profit

For the 2023 financial year, pre-tax profit margin (which measures a company’s ability to squeeze as much profit as is possible from turnover) for Honeywell was actually a pre-tax loss margin of (6.1) percent. Flour Mills, on the other hand, had a better pre-tax profit margin of 2.6 percent.

Return on equity

Flour Mills led its peers in terms of return on equity (ROE), recording an ROE of 13.1 per cent. Analysis shows that while every N100 worth of equity deployed by Flour Mills earned it N13.10 in after-tax profit, such N100 equity deployed earned Honeywell 78 kobo as after-tax loss.

Return on assets

ROA for Flour Mills was 3.7 percent, down from 5.9 percent in the prior year. This means that of every N100 worth of assets deployed by Flour Mills, N3.70 accrued to it as pre-tax profit while Honeywell recorded a N5.40 pre-tax loss from every N100 worth of assets employed.

Pre-tax profit per employee

For the 2023 financial year, Flour Mills recorded a pre-tax profit per employee of N6.72 million, much better than Honeywell’s N10.9 million pre-tax loss per employee.

Conclusion

Honeywell’s loss for its 2023 financial year shows how events beyond a company’s control can have an effect, either negative or positive, on its bottom line. It is clear that the economic recession Nigeria has been experiencing had a severely limiting effect on Honeywell’s revenues and performance. It remains to be seen what the 2024 FY will hold for the company.