Supremex, a North American manufacturer and marketer of a broad range of stock and custom envelopes and growing provider of packaging and specialty products, announced its results for the first quarter ended 31 March 2017, and declared a regular quarterly dividend.
First Quarter Highlights and Recent Events:
2017 Q1 revenues increased by 9.4% year-over-year, reaching $45.2 million.Revenue from the Canadian envelope market was down by 4.8%, to $28.1 million.Revenue from the U.S. envelope market grew by 19.1% year-over-year, reaching $11.0 million.Revenue from packaging and specialty products grew significantly, by 137.8%, reaching $6.1 million.Net earnings increased by 26.4%, reaching $4.1 million (or $0.14 per share) compared with $3.2 million (or $0.11 per share).EBITDA stood at $6.9 million, down by $0.2 million or 3.5% from $7.1 million.Maintained strong financial flexibility with a low debt ratio of 1.0x EBITDA.Hired Bertrand Jolicoeur as CFO and further strengthened its executive team.Approved a quarterly dividend payment of $0.06 per share, equivalent to the last quarter and up 9.1% year-over-year.
Purchased a total of 28,100 common shares during the first quarter of 2017 for cancellation under the Normal Course Issuer Bid program, for total considerations of $139,358
“Our revenues were up almost 10% in the quarter with the largest growth area coming from packaging and specialty products, followed by revenues from the US envelope market. I am pleased that our strategy to diversify the business continues to progress.” said Stewart Emerson, President & CEO of Supremex.
“Our growing exposure to a more competitive US envelope market, integration and enhancements of our recent acquisitions and the temporary costs associated with capacity upgrades impacted our EBITDA margins during the first quarter. While we are proud of our ability to maintain a lean and efficient organization we are excited by the recent additions to the corporate team, particularly as we continue to maintain a very active M&A program. We expect these recent executive nominations to improve our bandwidth, accelerate integration and improve our ability to extract additional operational efficiencies.”
“During the quarter, we maintained a fortress balance sheet with a very healthy debt level and returned significant shareholder value by way of dividends and share repurchase programs while maintaining the necessary financial flexibility to further allocate capital to accretive or strategic diversification opportunities should they arise.” concluded Mr. Emerson.
