Thai Union Group Plc reported a net profit of 1.2 billion baht in the first quarter of 2024, a 53.9% increase from the corresponding period last year.
The profit excluded a share of profit and tax benefits from Red Lobster.
The strong result was driven by a robust recovery in demand across the core ambient, petcare, and value-added product categories.
Improved performances across all the company's businesses helped lift sales by 1.7% in the first three months of the year to 33.2 billion baht from a year earlier.
The group's gross profit margin improved to 17.3%, driven by the frozen, petcare, and value-added product categories.
"Thai Union Group's focus on our core business of ambient, frozen, and petcare has been instrumental in returning our business to growth," said Thiraphong Chansiri, chief executive of Thai Union Group.
"Our group demonstrated great resilience during 2023 when we faced a challenging operating environment, and after seeing initial signs of a recovery in our performance in the final quarter of last year, I'm pleased to see that we have now emerged even stronger," he said.
Ambient sales grew 12.7% year-on-year to 17.2 billion baht in the first quarter, with sales volume rising 12.7%, resulting in an all time high sales contribution from the ambient category, driven by stronger demand across all regions, particularly the Middle East, Europe and the US.
Gross profit margin declined to 16.6% due to higher raw material prices in the group's inventory.
Petcare sales increased 13.2% from a year earlier to 4 billion baht due to higher sales from the premium mix and price adjustments. Petcare delivered a gross profit margin of 25.7%, the highest level since the second quarter of 2022.
Sales in the value-added category rose by 10.8% when compared with the first quarter of 2023 due to an improvement in the product mix. Gross profit margin reached a record-high of 29.5%.
Meanwhile, the frozen category saw sales decline 17.7% year-on-year, largely as a result of soft demand in the US market and the implementation of a rightsizing strategy, which started in the second quarter of 2023.
In terms of geographical diversity, sales in the US and Canada accounted for 38.6% of total revenues, followed by Europe (29.6%), 'others' (20.9%) and Thailand (10.9%).
Net profit experienced a strong growth, driven by improvements across all business categories, despite reduced foreign exchange gains, a lower share of profit, higher financial costs, and an increase in tax expenses.
During the quarter, the Japan Credit Rating Agency Ltd (JCR) raised Thai Union Group's foreign currency issuer credit rating from A- to A with a 'stable' outlook. This rating is the same level as JCR's sovereign credit rating of Thailand.