Irish ingredient giant Kerry savouring rising profits

Kerry, the Irish ingredients and flavours maker, has increased its full-year earnings guidance after a strong first half driven by recent acquisitions and new products sales.Sales revenue rose to €2.9bn, a 10% gain on the same period of last year, although on a like-for-like basis the growth was a more modest 2.5%.The profits before tax figure is complicated by so called "non-trading items" which the firm has been forced to take on, like integrating acquisitions into the firm and restructuring costs. After tax, these costs amounted to €59.2m which puts something of a hole in the figures. "Adjusted" profit before tax and non-trading items increased by 13.7% to €209m. This is the crucial figure and probably explains why Kerry's shares have risen 4% in morning trading.The firm is certainly confident enough to have raised the dividend by 10.2% to 10.8 euro cents per share.Commenting, Kerry's Chief Executive, Stan McCarthy said: "The group is confident of delivering our full-year growth objectives and has revised adjusted earnings per share guidance upwards. We now expect to achieve eight to twelve per cent growth in adjusted earnings per share in 2012".BS