KSB Pumps Company sees increases sales, even as some customers cannot afford to pay

There are, in corporate life, few things more frustrating than doing the hard part well and still watching the reward leak away elsewhere. KSB Pumps Company Ltd’s results for 2025 have precisely that flavour. The Lahore-based engineering manufacturer sold more, produced a fatter gross profit, and still ended up with a weaker operating performance because the accounts were hit by a sharp deterioration in trade-debt impairment. Yet by the time the numbers reached the bottom line, the picture had brightened again: lower finance costs helped lift profit for the year to Rs210 million from Rs56 million, and the board recommended a final cash dividend of Re1 per share. In other words, KSB’s year was neither cleanly triumphant nor plainly disappointing. It was a reminder that for industrial firms in Pakistan, a stronger order book is only the beginning of the story; getting paid remains an altogether different test.

Start with the part management would most happily place near the top of the page. Revenue from contracts with customers rose to Rs6.58 billion in 2025, up about 14% from Rs5.78 billion a year earlier. Cost of sales also increased, but more slowly than revenue, allowing gross profit to climb to Rs1.57 billion from Rs1.18 billion. That pushed gross margin up to about 23.8%, from roughly 20.5% in 2024. For a company that sells into capital-intensive, price-sensitive sectors, that is not a trivial change. It suggests a more favourable sales mix, better absorption of factory overheads, or at the very least a year in which volumes grew faster than the underlying cost burden. Earlier company materials had already pointed to stronger order intake through 2025, with management saying that by the first nine months of the year sales had risen 25.1% and gross profit 47.4%, while order intake and order in hand were also ahead of the previous year. The broad contour of the final accounts therefore did not come out of nowhere.