GraceKennedy (GK) has main­tained a sta­ble per­for­mance for the first quar­ter of the year, achiev­ing ro­bust rev­enues of J$36.26 bil­lion, an in­crease of 15.5 per cent or J$4.86 bil­lion over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od of 2021, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults for the three-month pe­ri­od end­ing March 31, 2022.

Ac­cord­ing to com­pa­ny GK’s prof­it be­fore oth­er in­come for the pe­ri­od was J$1.55 bil­lion, a J$26.6 mil­lion or 1.74 per cent in­crease over pri­or year, and prof­it be­fore tax was J$2.57 bil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing a J$53.9 mil­lion in­crease over the same pe­ri­od in 2021.

Net prof­it af­ter tax was J$1.88 bil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing an in­crease of 2.1 per cent or J$39.4 mil­lion over pri­or year.

Net prof­it at­trib­ut­able to stock­hold­ers was J$1.74 bil­lion, 4.9 per cent or J$81.7 mil­lion high­er than the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od of the pre­vi­ous year.

Earn­ings per stock unit for the pe­ri­od was J$1.75 com­pared to J$1.67 in 2021.

Group CFO, An­drew Mes­sa­do al­so an­nounced a div­i­dend pay­ment of 48 cents per stock unit, payable on 16 June 2022, to­tal­ing $476 mil­lion.

Com­ment­ing on GK’s first quar­ter re­sults, Group CEO of GK, Don We­h­by ex­plained that since late 2021 the GK team has been nav­i­gat­ing in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures, ris­ing in­ter­est rates, and sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions in many of the mar­kets where it op­er­ates around the world.

“The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has taught us how crit­i­cal it is to re­main ag­ile in the face of chal­lenges, and the GK team con­tin­ues to op­er­ate with this in mind, as we work to­geth­er to mit­i­gate the im­pact of head­winds on our busi­ness­es,” We­h­by.said.

GK’s Foods busi­ness record­ed an over­all growth in rev­enues and PBT when com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od of 2021; how­ev­er, there were mixed re­sults across its di­vi­sions, as lo­gis­tics is­sues and mar­gin pres­sures con­tin­ued to im­pact its op­er­a­tions glob­al­ly.

Mean­while, GraceKennedy Fi­nan­cial Group’s (GK­FG) Bank­ing and In­vest­ments and In­sur­ance seg­ments record­ed pos­i­tive per­for­mances for the pe­ri­od, while its mon­ey ser­vices seg­ment re­port­ed a de­cline in rev­enue and PBT, pri­mar­i­ly at­trib­uted to low re­mit­tance flows and for­eign cur­ren­cy volatil­i­ty dur­ing the quar­ter.

Over­all, how­ev­er, GK­FG con­tin­ued to record growth in rev­enues and PBT dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

“The geopo­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments of the last few months, cou­pled with the on­go­ing chal­lenges re­lat­ed to the pan­dem­ic, have re­sult­ed in our out­look be­ing cau­tious for the rest of 2022, but this does not daunt us in any way, and the GK team con­tin­ues to ex­e­cute our strate­gic ini­tia­tives with de­ter­mi­na­tion – we are al­ways up for any chal­lenge,” We­h­by added.

In April, GK an­nounced that it would be mak­ing a pri­vate eq­ui­ty in­vest­ment in the re­search and da­ta in­tel­li­gence busi­ness con­sul­tan­cy firm, Blue­dot, which us­es da­ta col­lec­tion and an­a­lyt­ics to in­form busi­ness in­sights and de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

GK al­so re­cent­ly re­leased its new GK ONE mo­bile app on Google Play and in the Ap­ple App Store.

Us­ing the GK ONE app users can cur­rent­ly pay bills or ap­ply for a First Glob­al Bank cred­it card. The app’s Re­ceive Re­mit­tance fea­ture, which will al­low users to de­posit their re­mit­tances di­rect­ly in­to their GK ONE wal­let is ex­pect­ed to launch in the com­ing months.