South Korean food giant CJ CheilJedang Corp. increased its quarterly operating profit for the third quarter in a row, reversing a decline from the third quarter of the previous year. This was due to increased sales of processed foods such as pre-cooked rice and frozen dumplings and pizza.

The company posted second-quarter operating profit of 269 billion won ($196.3 million) and revenue of 4.33 trillion won, up 14.1 percent and down 2.1 percent, respectively, from a year earlier, according to its announcement on Tuesday. The consolidated data includes profits from all of the food company’s subsidiaries except for shipping unit CJ Logistics Corp.

Including CJ Logistics’ quarterly results, the food company posted consolidated operating profit of 383.6 billion won and revenue of 7.24 trillion won in the April-June period, up 0.3 percent and 11.3 percent year-on-year, respectively.

CJ CheilJedang’s food business posted operating profit of 135.9 billion won and revenue of 2.71 trillion won in the second quarter, down 4.8 percent and 1 percent, respectively, from the same period last year. The company said the decline was due to the divestment of its Chinese unit Jixiangju last year.

Food sales amounted to 1.38 trillion won from the domestic market and 1.32 trillion won from abroad.

Of the foreign sales, revenue from Europe increased by 57%, due to the expansion of distribution channels in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.

In North America, sales of the company’s flagship products – frozen dumplings, pre-cooked rice and frozen pizza – increased 28%, 24% and 12% year-on-year, respectively. Bibigo and Schwan’s are the Korean company’s dumpling and pizza brands, respectively.

In Oceania, food sales increased 51% quarter-on-quarter, mainly due to the launch of new products such as frozen kimbap and dumplings at Australian supermarket chain Woolworths.

CJ CheilJedang’s organic business posted operating profit of 99 billion won and sales of 1.06 trillion won in the second quarter, up 17.4% and 1% year-on-year, respectively. The increase was led by tryptophan, or alpha amino acid, and natural food additives.

CJ CheilJedang’s animal feed and livestock breeding unit CJ Feed&Care posted a profit of 34.1 billion won.

Quarterly sales fell 12% year-on-year to 34.1 billion won, due to falling feed and livestock sales in key markets. However, profitability improved thanks to cost reductions and stabilization of meat prices.

Write to Hun-Hyoung Ha at [email protected]
Jihyun Kim edited this article.