PetroVietnam General’s H1 profit rises on Nokia phone sales

CASSAVAVIET to follow up Thanhnien Daily July 7, 2009. PetroVietnam General Services Joint Stock Co., a company that exports agricultural products and provides trading services, posted pretax profits of VND76 billion (US$4.3 million) for the first half (Photo by Hoang Kim).

The Ho Chi Minh City-based company, which also offers services such as lodging, storage and warehousing, said in a statement on its website its pretax profit rose 19 percent on higher-than-expected sales of cassava and Nokia mobile phones.

This means it has already achieved 76 percent of its full-year profit target of at least VND100 billion, said the statement, released on July 3 after the market closed.

The company was able to maintain high sales of Nokia mobile phones and increase sales of other information technology products, such as laptops by Hewlett-Packard Co. and Lenovo Group Ltd., the statement said.

The company recorded shipments of more than 250,000 metric tons of dried cassava slices to China and South Korea in the first six months from January to June, exceeding its target, according to the statement, which did not give comparable figures.

Revenue reached VND3.8 trillion in the period, equal to 69 percent of this year’s forecast of VND5.6 trillion, the statement said. This was a 36 percent rise from first-half revenue of VND2.8 trillion a year earlier.

Source: Bloomberg