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(Alliance News) - Harvest Minerals Ltd on Monday announced a widened annual loss as expenses rose and the company posted a sizeable loan impairment.
Separately, the fertiliser producer posted a trading update on its Arapua project in Brazil, which produces Harvest's KPFertil remineraliser product. The update said that as of Monday, sales for the past 12 months totalled around 50,000 tonnes equivalent to break-even at pretax profit level. The sale price was maintained at around BRL200, or USD28 per tonne.
For its year ended June 30, however, the firm posted a USD3.5 million pretax loss, widened from USD2.9 million. There were many contributing factors, but especially of note was a USD486,257 loan impairment, with no such impairment the year before. Likewise, Harvest also posted GBP469,872 of wages & salaries versus nothing in financial 2018 and USDUSD99,265 of recruitment expense - again versus nothing the year before.
Harvest's loss was also worsened by a range of higher fees, including increases in accounting, advertising, consultant, and director fees.
Some expense was offset by the massive rise in revenue to USD1.6 million from USD41,827 and Harvest is optimistic about its future.
For calendar year 2020, Harvest is aiming for a maiden pretax profit and has put a savings programme in place to enhance performance. It is also continuing to raise its capacity so as to meet future demand.
Executive Chair Brian McMaster said: "Having launched KPFertil just 12 months ago, we are delighted to report that we will close the year at breakeven at the profit before tax level. Given this progress and as we continue to build confidence in the product and grow our sales run-rate, we aim to see a maiden profit before tax in 2020.
"2019 has been a busy time. There is still a lot of hard work to be done with many more potential customers to meet and entice and costs to be tackled."
Shares in Harvest were up 2.3% at 4.50 pence in London on Monday morning.
By Anna Farley; annafarley@alliancenews.com
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