Imperial Sugar reports $6.5m loss in Q2

13-May-2012 - Last updated on 14-May-2012 at 09:32 GMT

Related tags Refinery

Imperial Sugar Company reported a net loss of $6.5m in the second quarter, compared to a net profit of $4.2m in the prior year period, while net sales were up 5.6%.

Net sales for the quarter ended March 31 were $203.0 million, compared to $192.2 million for the same period last year. The company said that the increase in sales was mainly due to higher domestic sugar prices, which were up 10.5%, and more than offset a 2.4% decrease in domestic sales volumes.

Last year’s results also included a $3.6m contribution from Imperial’s Gramercy, Louisiana refinery, which has been operated by Louisiana Sugar Refining (LSR) since January 2011.

The company said it would not hold a conference call to discuss the quarter’s results due to its pending merger agreement, announced earlier this month, when commodities group Louis Dreyfus said it had agreed to acquire the company for around $203m.

On Friday, Louis Dreyfus began the tender offer for all of Imperial’s outstanding shares at $6.35 per share.

Imperial Sugar has been involved in several major transactions over the past year, including the sale of its 50% stake in Wholesome Sweeteners for $60.4m in April.

The company’s president and CEO John Sheptor said in January that Imperial Sugar was considering selling assets to increase liquidity, after reporting a much larger than expected net loss for the fourth quarter of 2011, of $32.5m, or $2.73 per share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected a net loss of $0.89 per share.

The company has struggled to recover financially since a dust explosion at a Georgia refinery four years ago, in which 13 people were killed and nearly 50 were injured. The facility produced about nine percent of the United States’ refined sugar supply for the full fiscal year prior to the disaster.