Johannesburg - Packaging firm Nampak [JSE:NPK], reported a 14.3% rise in full-year profit helped by a lower tax rate and a robust performance outside its mainstay South African market.
Johannesburg-based Nampak, which also makes plastic milk bottles in Britain and Ireland, said diluted headline EPS totalled 194.4 cents in the year to end-September.
That fell short of the 203 cents forecast by Starmine SmartEstimates.
Headline EPS, the primary measure of profit in South Africa, exclude certain one-off items.
Sales increased 11.5% to R17.6bn with sales from the rest of Africa surging 61%.
Nampak is on a major expansion drive across the poor but fast growing continent, where it has said it could spend nearly $500m to boost sales contribution to 35% by 2015 from about 12% now.
"The strategy of investing in our core businesses in South Africa and growing and investing in businesses across Africa over the last three years is expected to enable the group to further improve on performance in 2013," the company said in a statement.
Shares in the company, which are up about 30% so far this year, rose 1.1% to R29.42 by 12:12.