ML Mac posts net loss on price shift

Its profit loss widened, but the company had an uptick in its nut harvest for the year

ML Macadamia Orchards LP, the state's largest macadamia nut grower, said its second-quarter loss widened 92 percent from last year, when it posted a favorable nut price adjustment.

The Hilo-based company posted a net loss of $356,000, or 5 cents a Class A unit, in the three months ending June 30, compared to a loss of $27,000, with no Class A unit earnings, a year earlier, the company said yesterday in a statement released after the market closed.

Last year's second-quarter results included a crop price adjustment of $327,000 from Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Corp., which was the exclusive purchaser of ML Macadamia's nuts through last year. The results also reflect $143,000 in costs related to the proposed acquisition of Mac Farms of Hawaii LLC, the second-largest processor in the state, for $12 million in cash and stock.

The transaction, announced as a nonbinding agreement in October, is expected to close in December, according to a July filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The deal had been slated to close early this year.

Overall revenue fell $63,000 to $1.2 million. Nut sales dropped 18.5 percent to $599,000 from $735,000 in the prior year. Revenue from the company's contract farming operation jumped 13.2 percent to $626,000 from $553,000.

The quarter marks the end of the harvest season and accounts for less than 4 percent of the year's total harvest, the company said.

However, the crop is "significantly more positive than last year," said Dennis Simonis, president and chief executive of ML Macadamia.

For the crop year ending in June, the company harvested 24 million pounds of nuts, up from 19 million pounds a year earlier, Simonis said in an interview.

"We had good weather and excellent farming practices," he said. "We had a very, very good crop for the last half of last year and the first half of this year."