Monde Nissin’s Q1 income drops

MANILA, Philippines — Snack food giant Monde Nissin registered a 17 percent drop in income in the first quarter to P1.9 billion amid challenges faced by its meat alternative business.

However, sales of its noodles business recovered following last year’s recall order by some European countries. In the first quarter, sales of noodles grew by 9.8 percent year-on-year and 12.4 percent quarter-over-quarter.

On the other hand, the revenue from the meat alternative segment declined by 6.2 percent in the first quarter to P3.5 billion due to lingering headwinds, specifically a challenging retail market.

“The meat alternative category continues to face strong headwinds. Last quarter, we discussed the steps that we were taking to right-size our US business to better reflect current market realities,” the company said.

“We are now similarly addressing our UK business, restructuring it to better weather the current category conditions while remaining agile and ready to benefit when the market for meat alternatives,” said Henry Soesanto, Monde Nissin CEO.

On the other hand, the Asia-Pacific branded food and beverage business saw net sales increase by 15.4 percent to P16.5 billion, mainly driven by volume growth and price increases in all categories.

“The APAC BFB business saw strong topline growth across all of our categories during the first quarter, with our noodles business, achieving double-digit quarter-on-quarter growth and volumes ahead of where we were last year.

“Moreover, the past four-week market share ending in March is at 68 percent, 200 basis points above where we were prior to last year’s selective recall in the EU. I am also happy to report that we are now beginning to see margin improvement as our higher cost commodity lock-ins have started to expire and we expect further margin improvement as the year progresses,” Soesanto also said.

Monde Nissin, led by Betty Ang as founder and president, has two core businesses namely, the Asia-Pacific branded food and beverage (F&B) business and the meat alternative business.

The Asia-Pacific branded F&B business is further divided into the product groups of instant noodles, biscuits, and other products, such as beverages, baked goods and culinary aid.

Some of the brands under this business include Lucky Me!, SkyFlakes, Fita and Mama Sita’s.

The meat alternative business meanwhile has the Quorn and Cauldron brands.

The company’s wholly owned subsidiaries are Monde Nissin Singapore Pte. Ltd. and Monde Nissin International Investments Ltd.