Improved performance in the meat processing and export business and livestock financing operations have more than offset a slower start to the year for livestock trading, chairman Mark Benseman said.
Confirming comments made by the company at the annual meeting in late November, he said directors are pleased with first-half trading and encouraged by recent trends in activity.
Estimates are that a satisfactory profit is likely for the year ending June 30 though second-half trading will be strongly influenced by livestock trading and dairy herd sale activity, much of which will be in late May and early June so it is difficult to forecast accurately this early.
The half-year result will be released by March 1.
ALF made an after-tax profit of $248,000 in the first-half of the 2017 year on group revenues of $10.69m. The rural business had pretax earnings of $650,000. Those figures compare with $480,000 and $850,000 respectively in the 2016 year.
ALF shares were trading at 7.2c on the NZX on Monday.
