For Engro, 2025 was a year of slowdown and consolidation

Engro Holdings ended 2025 with the sort of headline number that makes even jaded Karachi traders sit up a little straighter. The conglomerate’s owners’ profit after tax surged to Rs55.6 billion, with earnings per share at Rs46.20, Topline Securities noted in its result review.

And yet, if you read the same Topline note a second time – slower, with a pencil – you realise the real story of Engro’s year is not a breakout, but a reset. Strip out the accounting effects of a one-off reversal tied to thermal energy assets and the year looks far more modest: owners’ profit after tax was Rs29 billion, or EPS of Rs24.13. That, Topline argues, is the number investors should use to judge how the machine actually ran.

Engro itself all but agrees. In its directors’ report, the company says consolidated profit after tax was Rs107 billion (with Rs55.6 billion attributable to Engro shareholders), and confirms that “much of the increase” came from reversing impairments recognised in 2023 and 2024 on thermal energy assets previously classified as “held for sale”. It adds that excluding this one-off impact, profit attributable to shareholders was Rs29,059 million, reflecting “core earnings”.

In other words: 2025 was not a year of pure expansion. It was a year of slowdown and consolidation, shaped by three big realities: fertiliser margins under pressure, petrochemicals still bleeding, and a corporate centre busy rearranging the group – down to the very share count – while digesting one of the largest investments in its history.