05:34 PM EDT, 06/06/2024 (MT Newswires) -- Saputo (SAP.TO), a dairy processor, on Thursday said it met fiscal fourth-quarter earnings expectations, but reported a jump in sales and talked up its optimism for the year ahead.

It reported an adjusted profit in the quarter ended March 31 of $0.37 per share, meeting the forecast put forward by Capital IQ. It also reported an adjusted profit of $0.46 per share in the year-prior quarter.

Revenues were $4,545 million versus a forecast $4,308.76 million.

Commenting on the full-year results, Lino A. Saputo, Chair of the Board, President and CEO, said: "Fiscal 2024 was a year of continued resilience. Our financial performance reflected our ability to stay the course even amidst a dynamic macro-economic environment which included commodity price volatility, a challenged consumer, and ongoing inflationary pressures. It was also a year of continued progress where, after three years of investing in and optimizing our global network, we have now completed the bulk of the major capital projects under our Global Strategic Plan, and we are ramping up commercial production at several of our facilities. While these are important achievements, particularly amid challenging market conditions, we acknowledge that we still have work to do to realize our full potential.

"We delivered a solid performance in the fourth quarter, despite a negative $61 million impact from USA Market Factors and $15 million of duplicate operational costs in our USA Sector.

"Looking ahead to fiscal 2025, we can't help but be optimistic. Dairy commodities, while still volatile, are improving, and we are executing on our Global Strategic Plan. We have already started to see the benefits in our results from our major capital projects, and we expect for them to increase through FY25 and accelerate in FY26".

Saputo shares rose $0.03 to $27.95 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.