Mondi Reports Decreased Profit in Challenging Market Conditions

Mondi, the FTSE 100 paper-and-packaging company, has announced a decline in pretax profit for the first half of the year. This decrease in profit is attributed to lower revenue resulting from challenging market conditions. At the same time, Mondi is continuing the sale process of its Russian Syktyvkar facility.

Pretax profit from continuing operations dropped to 418 million euros ($457.2 million), in comparison to the previous year's figure of EUR933 million. Similarly, underlying earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) from continuing operations experienced a decline, amounting to EUR680 million compared to EUR942 million.

The company's revenue from continuing operations also witnessed a decrease, falling to EUR3.88 billion from EUR4.51 billion. These figures are below the forecasted EUR4.09 billion based on two analysts' expectations from FactSet.

Mondi's board has declared an interim dividend of 23.33 euro cents for the first half of the year, representing an increase compared to the previous dividend of 21.67 cents.

Mondi remains committed to its divestment of Mondi Syktyvkar and has received conditional offers from several potential buyers. Furthermore, the company has completed the sale of three Russian packaging converting operations and has received proceeds of EUR30 million from these transactions.

"It is intended that the net proceeds from the sale of all our Russian assets will be distributed to shareholders once our exit from Russia has been completed," stated Mondi.