Smurfit Kappa Group PLC on Wednesday reported a ‘strong’ half-year performance as profit rose significantly on a double-digit revenue jump and robust margins.

Shares were up 5.7% at 2,859.00 pence on Wednesday morning in London, placing Smurfit at the top of the FTSE 100 index in early trade.

For the six months ended June 30, the Dublin-based corrugated packaging company increased pretax profit by 86% to €769 million from €413 million a year ago.

Revenue rose 36% to €6.39 billion from €4.68 billion.

Further boosting profit, its Ebitda margin improved to 18.4% from 16.7%. ‘The result reflects the resilience of the group’s integrated model, the benefits of our capital spend programme, customer-focused innovation and pricing recovery, partly offset by higher year-on-year energy, recovered fibre, labour, distribution and other raw material costs,’ the company commented on its margin performance.

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation amounted to €1.17 billion, up 50% from €781 million a year ago.

‘Our strong performance is a result of the many actions we have taken over a number of years. These actions include significant customer-focused investments to meet growth, providing paper-based packaging in the marketplace and selective acquisitions ensuring security of supply to our customers,’ Chief Executive Officer Tony Smurfit explained.

Smurfit Kappa declared an interim dividend of 31.6 cents per share, up 8% on the 29.3 cents paid out a year before, reflecting ‘the confidence in the quality of our business and its future prospects’.

CEO Tony Smurfit said: ‘Inevitably, with the current global issues that surround us there are greater uncertainties than we have seen for some time. Nevertheless, we continue to see many opportunities for growth in the sustainable and innovative packaging solutions that we offer customers and the unique footprint of the businesses we operate. Our first half performance has set a strong foundation for the remainder of 2022 and beyond.’

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