ML Macadamia Orchards
has $146,000 1st quarter loss

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By Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com

ML Macadamia Orchards LP posted a loss of $146,000, or 2 cents a share, in the first quarter of this year, the partnership said yesterday.

But the loss was an improvement from a $416,000 loss, or 5 cents a share, in the same quarter of 2001, the partnership said. Seasonally, it is normally a tough quarter, the business said.

The partnership's shares, technically Class A partnership units, are traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol NUT. At yesterday's close, before the quarterly results were announced, they were at $3.68 a share, down 3 cents.

First-quarter revenues of $2.6 million were down 13 percent from $3 million a year earlier. Direct sales to the partnership's exclusive sales agent, Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Corp. were only slightly changed at $1.6 million this year from $1.7 million last year.

The price that ML Macadamia got for the nuts it sold averaged 48.4 cents a pound in the latest quarter, from 49.3 cents a pound in 2001.

In its contract farming, working acreage for others, the partnership was paid $1 million in the first quarter of this year, down 23 percent from $1.3 million in the first quarter of 2001.

ML Macadamia grows nuts on more than 4,000 acres of Big Island land.

The partnership said it made no allowance in its reporting for the fact that the processing business, Mauna Loa Macadamia, still owes it $3.2 million for nut deliveries last year and this year. Mauna Loa Macadamia, now owned by the Shansby Group on the mainland, had sued over those deliveries but lost in court.