Malaysia's Sime Darby Plantation says reviewing Liberia ops as Q2 profit plunges

(Adds comments on Liberia business, price outlook)

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Malaysia's Sime Darby Plantation Bhd posted a 70 percent plunge in second-quarter net profit on Thursday due to lower crude palm oil and palm kernel prices, and said it was reviewing its operations in the West African nation of Liberia.

Reuters reported last week, citing sources, that Sime Darby Plantation, the world's biggest oil palm planter by land holdings, is considering exiting its palm and rubber operations in Liberia due to lower-than-expected return on investment.

"We are doing a very robust review of our operations there and we hope to come up with a decision in the not too distant future," Managing Director Mohd Bakke Salleh told reporters in a post-earnings press conference, adding that a decision could be made in three months.

"It will come back to one critical factor: Are we making money or not? If a business is not making money, then we really have to do something," he said.

West Africa has been seen by many plantation companies as a new frontier for global palm oil expansion as land in Indonesia and Malaysia, which together produce over 80 percent of the world's palm, has become scarce.

Liberian president George Weah said in a statement earlier this month that the country could not afford to lose a major investor such as Sime Darby Plantation, and that the government was "committed to doing everything possible to ensure that this investment stays here".

PROFIT PLUNGE

The company's net profit for the quarter ending in December came in at 129 million ringgit ($31.70 million), compared with 429 million ringgit a year earlier.

Revenue fell to 3.5 billion ringgit from 4.1 billion ringgit, it said in a statement.

Declining inventories and a reduction in India's import duties on palm oil would help the company's performance going forward, Mohd Bakke said.

At the press conference, he said the company expects crude palm oil prices to firm up from April to between 2,250 to 2,450 ringgit per tonne. Benchmark palm oil prices were last down 0.5 percent at 2,121 ringgit a tonne.

Shares of Sime Darby Plantation closed 0.2 percent higher on Thursday, outperforming the benchmark stock index which fell 0.3 percent.

($1 = 4.0690 ringgit) (Reporting by Fathin Ungku; writing by A. Ananthalakshmi; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)