High Liner Foods on Tuesday reported its financial results for the first quarter of 2013.
The value-added frozen seafood company saw sales drop to USD 275.2 million (EUR 210 million), down from USD 287.6 million (EUR 219.8 million) during the same time period last year. The company attributes the drop to a decline in prices for commodity products, with about 85 percent of the decline due to U.S. sales.
EBITDA also declined to USD 21.3 million (EUR 16.2 million) compared to USD 31.5 million (EUR 24 million).
However, High Liner’s net income increased to USD 5.3 million (EUR 4 million) compared to USD 1.7 million (EUR 1.3 million) in the first quarter of 2012.
“The first quarter marks the first full quarter of complete comparables with the Icelandic USA acquisition,” said Henry Demone, president and CEO. “It was a challenging quarter, particularly in the U.S., as we faced a number of issues specific to the quarter and a very strong first quarter last year as the comparable period.
“While we expect the challenging first quarter to have an unfavorable effect on full-year 2013 sales and Adjusted EBITDA, we are working to minimize the impact of these headwinds on our profitability going forward. As expected, seafood costs have stabilized and our cost of sales has decreased as we sell more less-expensive inventory.”
