Chicken of the Sea Owner Surges on Covid Demand for Tinned Fish
- Chicken of the Sea owner’s seafood sales increase in pandemic
- Gross profit margin at 3-year high of 18.2% on demand for cans
Chicken of the Sea canned fish products sit in Bangkok.
Photographer: Dario Pignatelli/Bloomberg
Thai Union Group reported a more than 15-fold increase in its second-quarter profit, though the owner of Chicken of the Sea and John West seafood brands said the increase would have been a more modest 13.4% if costs to settle an antitrust lawsuit in the U.S. a year earlier were excluded.
Net profit was 1.72 billion baht ($55 million) in the April-June quarter, compared with 111.5 million baht in the same period a year ago. Sales rose 2.6% to 33.1 billion baht, led by its ambient seafood business, the company said in a statement to the Thai exchange Tuesday. Thai Union said it set aside about 1.4 billion baht to settle its legal case in the same quarter in 2019, which also had tax implications.