Overview
Agarapatana Plantations cultivates and manufactures high-grown black tea across 20 estates in the Western High and Uva High regions. It also has timber, hydropower and related plantation activities, with value-addition, renewable energy and organic tea initiatives under development.
The latest operating picture is mixed: margins recovered from the immediately preceding quarter, but the June quarter remained weak against comparable June history and profit declined year-on-year.
Price performance
AGPL closed at LKR 16.00 on 2026-08-11. Its three-month return was negative 11.3%, versus negative 7.0% for the ASPI, while its one-year return was negative 13.7% against the index's 9.4% gain.
The share sits 31.7% below its 52-week high and only 24.0% up from its low, placing it near the bottom of its own range. Recent 60-day annualised volatility was 46.6%, above its own one-year level of 40.6%, and 20-day average volume was 111.5% above its 60-day norm.
The stock's three-month decline occurred without company news in the last 30 days, so the supplied data does not establish a company-specific explanation for the underperformance.
Valuation
AGPL trades at a P/E of 10.0, while its price-to-book multiple ranks at the 81st percentile of the plantations-agri sector. Its 18.9% return on equity provides a fundamental explanation for some premium to book value, although the valuation is not at the sector's low end.
The dividend yield is 3.1%. The comparable payout record moved from LKR 1.5 per share in FY2025 to LKR 0.5 per share in FY2026 so far, although the latest financial year may not yet be complete, so this should not be treated as a confirmed full-year cut.
News and sentiment
Company coverage is thin: there were no material articles in the 90-day window, leaving no positive, negative or neutral company-news signal.
The latest confirmed corporate action was a LKR 0.5 first interim dividend for FY2026, which went ex-dividend on 2026-01-12 and was paid on 2026-01-26.
Financials
The June 2026 quarter showed mixed margin movement against June 2025. Gross margin widened from 10.5% to 12.2%, while operating margin improved from 5.8% to 6.3%. Net margin narrowed from 5.3% to 3.9%, the weakest of four comparable June quarters; gross and operating margins were each third of four.
Revenue fell 15.3% year-on-year to LKR 1.75 billion. Operating profit fell LKR 11 million to LKR 110 million, while net profit fell LKR 41 million to LKR 68 million. The LKR 42 million gap between operating and net profit shows that finance costs, tax, associates or foreign-exchange effects still removed a meaningful part of operating earnings.
Owners' equity was LKR 4.19 billion at June 2026, compared with LKR 4.37 billion a year earlier. The latest filings show 500 million shares outstanding, versus 465.4 million in the March 2024 annual filing, so older per-share comparisons must be read against the changed share base.
Risks
The main financial risk is that earnings are not fully converting into cash. At 2025-03-31, cash conversion was 0.96 times, meaning operating cash flow was slightly below operating profit, although free cash flow was LKR 712 million.
Funding risk is contained but not absent: gearing was 21.3%, interest cover was 8.38 times and the current ratio was 1.32 times at the same group-basis date. The plantations-agri sector also faces labour shortages and export-sector funding vulnerability. Broader cost pressure matters because fuel prices had risen 47% and inflation reached 7.3% by the supplied market backdrop.
Outlook
As at 2026-08-11, the next company-specific event is the quarter ending 2026-09-30. The filing is expected from 2026-10-30 to 2027-01-26 and will replace the June figures used here, showing whether the weak like-for-like margin ranking persists.
Sector tea news is supportive in local-currency terms, with the July national sales average higher, but the year-to-date average was lower in US dollar terms and labour shortages remain relevant. The available data cannot determine how those sector conditions are affecting AGPL specifically, while the absence of company news leaves the share-price decline unexplained.