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Ceo’s Statement
At the MacCoffee brand launch in Myanmar
Ms Nan Khin Zayar, MacCoffee’s brand
ambassador in Myanmar
Food Empire Holdings Limited Annual Report 2013
16
My fellow shareholders,
It was an honor for me to be appointed
as CEO last year. My first year as CEO
has been an invigorating experience,
working with dedicated colleagues
developing various new and existing
projects in our new markets.
We saw FY2013 revenue grow to
US$262.9 million, representing a
10.6% year-on-year (“yoy”) vis-a-vis
FY2012. This also represented the fifth
consecutive year that we have increased
our top line since 2009. For FY2013,
the Group recorded a profit after tax of
US$11.3 million as compared to US$20.2
million in FY2012, with factors such as
higher costs relating to investments
in advertising and promotion (A&P)
activities, increased staff costs, foreign
exchange losses, investments in new
markets and the startup cost associated
with our green-field projects contributing
to the decline in profitability.
Last year, I spoke about the three priority
areas that I will be focusing on as CEO.
The first priority is our drive to develop
our business in Asia, Middle East and the
African continents. The second priority
is to continue exploring merger and
acquisition (M&A) activities which have
the potential to strengthen our Group.
The third priority is to streamline and
restructure our operations, in particular,
our manufacturing processes.
I am pleased to report on our progress in
these key areas.
Firstly, despite devaluation in some of
the local currencies, sales to the Group’s
Other Markets increased by 1.9% mainly
resulting from higher sales turnover in
Vietnam and Myanmar. Recent trends
have been even more encouraging, with
sales for the Other Markets increased by
18.8% for the fourth quarter of 2013.
We made several management changes
to our team in Vietnam, which helped to
increase our top line during the year. In
August 2013, MacCoffee made its foray
into Myanmar. To celebrate the launch,
MacCoffee was proud to partner Yoma
Strategic to bring to Myanmar its first
International Marathon, the Yoma Yangon
International Marathon. Our joint venture
factory in Myanmar has already started
production and is supporting our drive
into the market.
We also saw encouraging progress
in both Middle East and Africa over
the past year and have taken steps to
further expand our businesses there. In
Africa, we started operations in Nigeria
and Kenya, as two key bases for our
expansion into West and East Africa
respectively.
Secondly, we continue to explore
M&A opportunities that could be
complementary to the Group’s
businesses and would help in
diversification and provide new avenues
of growth.