KARACHI, Aug 21: It’s the reporting season. And after the stellar earnings announcement by Shell Pakistan on Tuesday, the market is now anxiously waiting for competitor PSO to announce results on Thursday. But investors were taken by surprise on Wednesday by the out-of-turn announcement of half term numbers by the Board of FFC Jordan Fertilizer Company Limited.

Both by its notice to shareholders of July 10 and the date of board meeting stipulated in the daily stock exchange quotations, Fauji Jordan was supposed to have come out with the results announcements on Thursday, Aug 22, and not Wednesday.

Just as it is difficult to pinpoint this as a deliberate misdoing, it is equally difficult to brush it aside as a minor lapse, for apart from the fact that all of the market would have been misled, some investors may have made money at the cost of others. It is important that the stock exchange and the regulator—if they could disengage themselves from their on-going bickering over power for a while—should look at the issue. And while they are at it, it might also do the market good if they were to investigate a few earlier cases, where result announcements were made by the boards without the date of board meeting first appearing on the stock exchange quotations.

The 10-rupee share in Fauji Jordan had gained 30 paisa on Tuesday and another 15 paisa on Wednesday; the price moving up from Rs6.45 to Rs6.90 at the end of trading on Wednesday; some 9.1 million shares changed hands on Wednesday.

Now a glance at the FFC Jordan’s half-term results. At the operating level, the company was able to post profit of Rs194.7 million for the half year ended June 30, 2002, compared with operating loss amounting to Rs485.3 million suffered in the corresponding period of the previous year. That should provide a measure of relief to the shareholders, though the company returned pre-tax loss of Rs1 billion for the period; at the same time in 2001, the company had posted pretax loss of Rs1.4 billion. After-tax loss stood at Rs1 billion, against taxed loss of Rs1.4 billion in the same time of the earlier year.

Sales in terms of value amounted to Rs1.7 billion,compared with sales of Rs2.7 billion in the first half of 2001.

The company could earn gross profit of Rs441.5 million, against gross loss of Rs131.3 million in the similar period of the previous year.

Financial charges continued to be huge—at Rs1.2 billion for the first six months of the current year, against Rs892 million in the same period of 2001.

The Herculean efforts by the “Fauji family” that have gone into rescuing FFC Jordan Fertilizer appears to be paying off now.

From pouring equity to restructuring of debts, the company has gone through massive financial restructuring. And the shutdown of DAP plant last August has been a good idea, after all.