HARTALEGA Holdings Bhd's net profit for the fourth quarter ended March 31 2010 jumped almost half to RM46.4 million, backed by strong sales of both nitrile and latex gloves.

It said the achievement is in line with the group's continuous expansion in production capacity, increase in demand, improvement in production processes and better cost control.

The positive results were achieved on the back of a higher revenue of RM163 million for the fourth quarter compared with RM125 million in the preceding year's corresponding quarter.

"With consistent year on year double digit growth in terms of profitability and turnover, the group is bullish on the year ahead," said Hartalega managing director Kuan Kam Ho in a statement yesterday.
He said the group managed to achieve the internal target growth set for both sales revenue and net profit for the year and expects demand for gloves to remain strong.

He said for the final three month period, earnings per share was RM19.15 while net assets per share stood at RM146.20.

Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation was RM62.4 million compared with RM39.5 million previously.

Cumulatively, Hartalega recorded a net profit of RM143 million for the financial year ended recently against RM84.5 million in financial year 2009.

This marked an impressive 69.3 per cent increase in net profit compared with the last fiscal year.

"Our bottomline performance was the result of stronger revenue growth, which saw a 29 per cent jump to RM572 million compared with RM443 million achieved a year ago," Kuan said.

In tandem with the group's strong performance, Hartalega declared a total dividend of 20 sen per share for the fiscal year.

Kuan said in an effort to reward shareholders for their continuous support, the group has proposed a bonus issue of 121.2 million new shares of 50 sen each. The issue is on the basis of one new share for every two existing shares held.

Moving forward, Kuan said, Hartalega wants to ensure plans to increase plant capacity are on track, especially the upgrade of Plant 1 and the completion of Plant 5.

"Once this is completed, annual production capacity will increase to 9.9 billion pieces of gloves annually from 7 billion now," he said.