Sri Lanka’s Laugfs Gas makes a loss of 94-pct in June 2022 quarter

ECONOMYNEXT- Sri Lanka’s Laugfs Gas Plc, a cooking gas distributor, said it lost 94 percent or 1.75 billion rupees in the June 2022 quarter due to a shortage of dollars that hampered the company’s ability to import while the rupee slipped against the dollars drastically.

The loss per share for the quarter was 4.53 rupees.

Laugfs Gas revenue for the June 2022 quarter fell 16 percent from a year earlier to 8 billion rupees in the quarter, while the cost of sales fell 22 percent to 7.4 billion rupees generating a 628 million rupee gross profit.

Foreign currency losses have shot up 3,622 percent to 796 million rupees compared to 21 million rupees in the previous year.

“Main contributory factor for the adverse financial performance observed for the quarter was due to non-availability of foreign exchange for imports, unbearable interest cost burden during the period under review and both of which were beyond the control of the management,” the company said in its stock exchange filing.

Laugfs supply controls 20 percent of Sri Lanka’s LP gas market.

Finance costs rose to 905 million rupees from 514 million rupees a year earlier.

Despite the price increases in the market for cooking gas most companies including Laugfs had issues opening letters of credit.

(Colombo/Aug15/2022)