The Freedom Foods Group Ltd (ASX: FNP) share price is up around 20% after it reported its FY19 result.
Freedom Foods is a food company that was started in 1986 with a focus on making nutritious and healthier food and beverages. It started with products in soy, rice milks and breakfast drinks. Some of its brands include Freedom, Milk Lab, Crafted Blends, Messy Monkeys, Australia’s Own, So Natural, and Goodness.
Freedom Foods’ Tasty FY19 Report
Freedom Foods reported that its net sales increased by 34.9% to $476.2 million over the year. There was a good performance from the Group Brands segment, growing to 48.5% of total sales.
Australian retail grocery sales grew by 42%. Freedom Foods boasted about being the fastest growing retail branded grocery supplier. There was also success for new brands introduced in late FY18 with Australia’s Own into the UHT dairy category (up 149.3%) and Heritage Mill in the mainstream cereal and snacks categories (up 362.3%).
Plus, Messy Monkeys grew by 126.6% and Milklab grew by 168.7%.
All of the above impressive numbers saw underlying operating EBITDA (click here to learn what EBITDA means) rise by 40.8% to $55.2 million and statutory EBITDA increased by 35.8% to $42.8 million.
Operating net profit after tax (NPAT) rose by 40.1% to $21.9 million thanks to higher EBITDA, but offset by higher depreciation.
However, statutory net profit decreased by 9% to $11.6 million due to pre-acquisition costs, foreign exchange losses and the write down of discontinued product formats due to exiting a number of major contract manufacturing arrangements.
Market consensus was for a net profit of $20.6 million.
Freedom Foods Dividend
Freedom Foods’ Board decided to declare a dividend of 3.25 cents per share, bringing the total FY19 dividend to 5.5 cents per share – an increase of 10%.
Is The Freedom Foods Share Price A Buy?
Freedom Foods said it’s well positioned to build into a major global food and beverage business, with a focus on specialty and high value-added products.
Plus, management expect as the company finishes investing it will add to profit further.
There’s plenty to be excited about by Freedom Foods, but at 71 times this year’s earnings it certainly isn’t cheap after the share price jump this morning.
Whilst I’d consider Freedom foods for my portfolio, I’d also want to think about the rapidly growing shares in the free report below as well.
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