AGT Reports $7.9 Million Profit

TORONTO - Nov 10/16 - SNS -- AGT Food and Ingredients Inc. reported net earnings of CDN $7.938 million on sales of $442.288 million for the third quarter ending September 30, compared to a loss of $10.837 million on sales of $362.755 million during the same three month period last year.

This lifted net earnings for the fiscal year to $32.251 million on sales of $1322.341 million, compared to a loss of $3.193 million on sales of $1126.21 million during the same nine-month period last year.

In announcing the results, AGT said its bulk handling and distribution segment contributed $8.6 million Adjusted EBITDA for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 compared to $1.7 million Adjusted EBITDA for the nine months ended September 30, 2015. The food ingredients and packaged foods Adjusted EBITDA was $135.23 per metric ton (MT) for the nine months ended September 30, 2016, compared to $126.07 per MT for the nine months ended September 30, 2015 an increase of 7.3%.

"We have a significant harvest completed in Western Canada and the Northern Tier United States with the highest production levels ever reported for peas and lentils," said Murad Al-Katib, President and CEO of AGT.

"While there have been some quality issues as a result of the late season and harvest weather, the produced product is certainly marketable to pulse consumption markets around the world. Prices for pulses have been under pressure with these types of quantities coming into the market; however, we feel this will assist in further stimulating demand to markets like India and Turkey, where they are both price and quality sensitive and need to continue filling local demand with imported product.

"Our food ingredient business is continuing to advance and we are pleased with our progress as pulse ingredients continue to appear on the ingredient deck of all sorts of consumer packaged foods and petfood. Overall, our business is returning to normalized volumes and stable margins after the low remaining qualities available for processing and export earlier in the year."