Ad hoc me­dia re­leases

ORIOR re­ports on var­i­ous ad­just­ments; op­er­a­tional busi­ness re­mains ro­bust, out­look is pos­i­tive.

Ad hoc an­nounce­ment pur­suant to Art. 53 LR

Zurich, 5 De­cem­ber 2024

In re­cent weeks, the Board of Di­rec­tors and the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the ORIOR Group have ded­i­cated them­selves to ad­dress­ing and clar­i­fy­ing all on­go­ing is­sues. The aim of this ef­fort is to pro­vide a clear overview of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, high­light key in­flu­ences, and cre­ate greater clar­ity for the fu­ture.

One-off ex­tra­or­di­nary ad­just­ments
Sev­eral pro­jects re­lated to site de­vel­op­ment are be­ing ei­ther dis­con­tin­ued or sim­pli­fied. The “Con­ve­nience Hub” pro­ject in Ober­ent­felden, ini­tially un­veiled at the start of the year, will no longer pro­ceed. Ad­di­tion­ally, plans are in place to re­pur­pose or sell the un­used an­nex build­ing at the Ober­ent­felden site. These mea­sures will re­sult in value ad­just­ments amount­ing to CHF 20–22 mil­lion.

Fur­ther­more, the Com­pany is con­sid­er­ing clos­ing a small plant in Olen, Bel­gium, by the end of Sep­tem­ber 2025. The pri­mary rea­son for this is the ter­mi­na­tion of a larger vol­ume con­tract with a for­eign cus­tomer for strate­gic rea­sons. Con­se­quently, pro­vi­sions of CHF 6 mil­lion have been set aside for the sev­er­ance plan. Ad­di­tional pro­vi­sions of CHF 5–6 mil­lion have been al­lo­cated for other nec­es­sary value ad­just­ments, re­struc­tur­ing mea­sures, and vol­ume shifts. The other plants in Bel­gium are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing sig­nif­i­cant vol­ume growth, and their ca­pac­i­ties will be grad­u­ally ex­panded fur­ther over the com­ing years.

Pro­vi­sions amount­ing to CHF 4–5 mil­lion have been made in re­la­tion to po­ten­tial le­gal oblig­a­tions and on­go­ing le­gal dis­putes from pre­vi­ous years in­volv­ing Ca­su­al­food, a com­pany based in Frank­furt which op­er­ates mo­bile and fixed small-scale spaces in the travel gas­tron­omy sec­tor.

The ef­fi­ciency and long-term prof­itabil­ity of the units re­main a cen­tral fo­cus and will be fur­ther strength­ened. To sup­port the planned struc­tural ad­just­ments at Group level, pro­vi­sions of CHF 2 mil­lion have been set aside.

In to­tal, this re­sults in one-off ad­just­ments of ap­prox­i­mately CHF 37–41 mil­lion for the 2024 fi­nan­cial year, of which around CHF 17–19 mil­lion will im­pact EBITDA.

Ro­bust op­er­a­tional busi­ness
The op­er­a­tional busi­ness con­tin­ues to demon­strate fun­da­men­tal sta­bil­ity, with some ar­eas show­ing growth. Sev­eral com­pe­tence cen­tres are ex­pected to achieve their best an­nual re­sults to date. For the cur­rent year, or­ganic and cur­rency-ad­justed rev­enue is ex­pected to re­main slightly be­low the pre­vi­ous year’s level (pre­vi­ously +0.5–1.5%). This rev­enue stag­na­tion is pri­mar­ily due to sig­nif­i­cant prod­uct range ad­just­ments, de­clin­ing ex­port sales in the plant-based sec­tor, and a few losses in ten­der­ing processes. In the short term, the loss of these sig­nif­i­cant vol­umes will af­fect op­er­a­tional pro­duc­tiv­ity. Af­ter ac­count­ing for the de­scribed one-off ef­fects, the EBITDA mar­gin is ex­pected to range be­tween 5.0% and 5.3%. The ad­justed op­er­a­tional EBITDA mar­gin, ex­clud­ing one-off ef­fects, is an­tic­i­pated to fall by be­tween 8.0% and 8.3% (pre­vi­ously 9.0–9.3%). In­vest­ments in 2024 will be lower than ini­tially planned, with an ex­pected to­tal of CHF 41–43 mil­lion (pre­vi­ously CHF 48–56 mil­lion).

Div­i­dends
The Board of Di­rec­tors has reaf­firmed its div­i­dend strat­egy, aim­ing for a div­i­dend that re­mains at least sta­ble in ab­solute terms. The ad­just­ments out­lined ear­lier are one-off mea­sures and re­late to spe­cific events, pro­jects and busi­ness units. Over­all, the op­er­a­tional busi­ness re­mains ro­bust, and the out­look is pos­i­tive. Based on this, the Board of Di­rec­tors plans to pro­pose an un­changed div­i­dend of CHF 2.51 per share to the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing for the 2024 fi­nan­cial year.

Pos­i­tive out­look
For the 2025 fi­nan­cial year, sta­ble or­ganic rev­enue growth is ex­pected, ad­justed for one-off ef­fects. The po­ten­tial clo­sure of the plant in Olen is ex­pected to have a low sin­gle-digit mil­lion im­pact on rev­enue for the In­ter­na­tional seg­ment. Ca­su­al­food is ex­pected to have a pos­i­tive im­pact on rev­enue with a strong per­for­mance. A par­tic­u­lar fo­cus will be on fur­ther de­vel­op­ing the suc­cess­ful joint ven­ture with Heine­mann, which has al­ready achieved low dou­ble-digit mil­lion rev­enue and is set to be pro­por­tion­ally con­sol­i­dated, start­ing in 2025. The rapid growth in veg­e­tar­ian and ve­gan plant-based prod­ucts is slow­ing across Eu­rope. De­spite this, ORIOR re­mains com­mit­ted to de­vel­op­ing prof­itable new niches and cus­tomer seg­ments. In light of this strat­egy, the col­lab­o­ra­tion with its part­ner in Eng­land is to be dis­con­tin­ued.

EBITDA mar­gin is ex­pected to im­prove in 2025 and con­tinue to grow steadily in the fol­low­ing years. The op­er­a­tional units will re­main a key fo­cus for in­vest­ments. The in­fra­struc­ture and processes at ex­ist­ing pro­duc­tion sites will be strength­ened to serve se­lected niches in a fo­cused man­ner while at the same time achiev­ing the nec­es­sary ef­fi­ciency for han­dling large vol­umes. The planned CAPEX for 2025 is CHF 18–20 mil­lion, with a sim­i­lar level an­tic­i­pated for 2026. We ex­pect the debt ra­tio (net debt/​EBITDA) to re­main be­low 3x by the end of 2025.

Re­tail in Eu­rope, and no­tably in Switzer­land, is con­stantly evolv­ing. How­ever, we view the re­align­ment of key mar­ket play­ers in Switzer­land as a pos­i­tive trend, par­tic­u­larly for our busi­ness. We are proac­tively work­ing on our long-stand­ing part­ner­ships to fur­ther strengthen col­lab­o­ra­tion along the en­tire value chain.

The search for a new CEO is cur­rently un­der­way. With the ex­ist­ing in­terim so­lu­tion, ORIOR is well po­si­tioned for the time be­ing.

In­vi­ta­tion to Q&A video con­fer­ence
To­day, Thurs­day, 5 De­cem­ber 2024, the man­age­ment team and the Chair­man of the Board of Di­rec­tors will be avail­able to an­swer ques­tions dur­ing a Teams video con­fer­ence.

Tele­phone con­fer­ence in Ger­man/​Eng­lish: Thurs­day, 05 De­cem­ber 2024, 10:00am (CET)

Please con­tact us so that we can pro­vide you with the ac­cess de­tails.
> Mara Bach­mann, mara.bach­mann@orior.ch, di­rect line +41 44 308 65 02.

Con­tact
Milena Math­i­uet, Chief Cor­po­rate Af­fairs Of­fi­cer
Tele­phone +41 44 308 65 13, e-mail: milena.math­i­uet@orior.ch

In­vestor's agenda
5 March 2025: Pub­li­ca­tion of 2024 fi­nan­cial re­sults and An­nual Re­port
21 May 2025: An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing of ORIOR AG

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