1st-Half Profits Rise At Gist-Brocades

Dutch company Gist-Brocades has announced net profits for the first six months of 1996 of 69.7 million guilders ($41.8 million), an increase of 8.2% on the like, year-earlier period. Earnings per share were 1.78 guilders, up 4.1%. Turnover in the first half of the year was 980.8 million guilders, a rise of 10%.

The firm said that turnover of industrial pharmaceutical products was ahead of the year-earlier period. This was attributed to acquisitions and organic growth. Due, among other things, to increases in raw material prices and other production costs, profit remained at much the same level.

G-B expects net profits for the whole of 1996 to be distinctly higher than those for the whole of 1995, assuming that there will be no excessive fluctuations in the exchange rates of major currencies.