Grupo Argos 2Q 2023 Net Income Nearly Quadruples Year-on-Year
Medellin-based multinational cement/concrete giant Grupo Argos announced August 8 that its second-quarter (2Q) 2023 net income rose 248% year-on-year, to COP$218 billion (US$53 million).
Operating income rose 24% year-on-year, to COP$6.7 trillion (US$1.69 billion), while adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose 45%, to COP$1.26 trillion (US$317 million).
In its United States operations, “improvements in productivity and prices allowed Argos to obtain a record EBITDA for the first semester [January through June 2023], which reached US$158 million and increased 41% compared to the same period in 2022,” according to the company.
Meanwhile, sales in the U.S. rose 14%, to US$860 million, even though “cement shipments remained stable and concrete shipments decreased 7.8%,” according to the company.
In the U.S. market, “housing indicators show a recovery trend and the industrial and infrastructure segments continue to gain momentum, as evidenced by the double-digit growth in public spending on construction registered during each month of 2023,” the company added.
In its Colombia market, first-half (1H) 2023 EBITDA has risen 23% year-on-year, to COP$328 billion (US$82.6 million), while 1H revenues rose 10.5% year-on-year, hitting COP$1.4 trillion (US$353 million).
As for Colombian cement volumes, these fell 5.6% year-on-year, while concrete volumes dipped 5.5%.
These declines came “mainly due to lower market dynamics and the strategy of prioritizing profitability in all business lines. On the other hand, [Colombian] cement exports increased 13.5% thanks to shipments to the United States,” according to Argos.
In the Caribbean and Central American markets,1H 2023 EBITDA rose 2.8% year-on-year, to US$63 million, while sales rose 3.7%, to US$286 million, “Cement shipments decreased 3.8% while concrete shipments increased 7.5% compared to the first six months of last year,” the company added.
“These results were leveraged, to a large extent, by a satisfactory recovery of volumes in Panama and a strong dynamic in the Dominican Republic, a country in which the company began an expansion project of close to 25% in its cement production capacity,” according to Argos.
