Pryce earnings nearly double

MANILA, Philippines – Pryce Corp. marked a banner year in 2015 after net profit nearly doubled on the back of strong liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) sales and improvement in margins.

The company said it expects the trend to continue both in top line and bottom line performance in 2016 following infrastructure and logistics investments made the past couple of years.

Pryce said it ended 2015 with a 98 percent increase in unaudited, consolidated net income to P586.3 million from P296.9 million in 2014.

After provision for income tax, net earnings translated to a 10 percent return on sales, an improvement over the 4.65 percent return on sales achieved in 2014.

“2015 was a banner year for Pryce Corp., especially for its subsidiary, Pryce Gases Inc. Performance in 2016 is expected to result in substantial increases in revenue as the company starts to reap the benefits from the infrastructure and logistics expansion projects put in place in 2013 to 2015,” the company said.

The profit jump, the firm noted, was attained despite the slight decline in consolidated revenues to P5.859 billion from P6.381 billion due to the roughly 40 percent fall in LPG prices.

“Consolidated revenues managed to hold largely due to the remarkable growth of 29 percent in its subsidiary’s PryceGas brand’s LPG sales volume from 113,000 metric tons (MT) in 2014 to 146,000 MT in 2015,” the company said.