Ad hoc me­dia re­leases

ORIOR pre­sents broad-based growth and in­creased profit in an­niver­sary year

Ad hoc an­nounce­ment pur­suant to Art. 53 LR

Zurich, 8 March 2023

• Net sales up by 3.7% (organic growth 6.0%) to CHF 636.7 million, driven by broad-based volume growth.

• EBITDA reached the previous year’s level of CHF 64.1 million, with an EBITDA margin of 10.1%.

• Significant increase in EBIT of 7.2% to CHF 37.9 million, with profit up by 10.6% to CHF 30.2 million.

• Attractive dividend policy with a steady increase in absolute dividend confirmed: proposed dividend of CHF 2.50 per share.

• Planned investment and site development projects successfully implemented.

• ESG incorporated in Articles of Association; Board of Directors appoints ESG Committee.

• Board of Directors: Remo Brunschwiler nominated for election as new Chairman.

• 30 years of ORIOR: ORIOR thanks its employees, customers, suppliers, partners and investors with a unique Food Festival.

• Outlook 2023: continued broad-based growth and stable margins expected in a volatile environment.

In­ter­na­tion­ally ac­tive Swiss food & bev­er­age group ORIOR can look back on a suc­cess­ful an­niver­sary year in a com­plex and chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment. CEO Daniel Lutz sum­marises: “We achieved good re­sults, es­pe­cially once all of the in­flu­enc­ing fac­tors are taken into ac­count. The econ­omy has now been in a state of cri­sis for three years. The ORIOR New Nor­mal model be­came the key ini­tia­tive we took to suc­cess­fully han­dle the many chal­lenges fac­ing us. We were able to im­prove our key fig­ures – again and par­tially rel­e­vant – com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year, de­spite the dis­tor­tions caused by high en­ergy, trans­port and sourc­ing costs as well as strong in­fla­tion in many places in Eu­rope. This is ev­i­dence that we have reached a new level of qual­ity in terms of re­silience, thanks in par­tic­u­lar to the breadth of our port­fo­lio and our fo­cus on for­ward-fac­ing niches with growth po­ten­tial.”

In the 2022 fi­nan­cial year, the ORIOR Group gen­er­ated net sales of CHF 636.7 mil­lion, an in­crease of 3.7% over the pre­vi­ous year (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 614.1 mil­lion). Re­ported net sales growth con­sists of or­ganic growth of 6.0% and a cur­rency ef­fect of –2.3%. Sales re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion (net book­ing of in­ter­me­di­ary sales) of CHF 4.1 mil­lion and dis­con­tin­ued sales to Rus­sia of CHF 1.9 mil­lion re­duced net sales by a to­tal of CHF 6.0 mil­lion. The on­go­ing re­cov­ery of Ca­su­al­food and the food ser­vice sec­tor, as well as re­spon­si­ble, grad­ual price in­creases and broad-based vol­ume growth were the main dri­vers for the pos­i­tive trend. In ad­di­tion, the di­ver­si­fied po­si­tion­ing of the Group pro­vided a sta­bil­is­ing ef­fect once again. The Group’s gross mar­gin in­creased from 44.8% to 45.9%. EBITDA re­mained un­changed at CHF 64.1 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 64.1 mil­lion), cor­re­spond­ing to an EBITDA mar­gin of 10.1% (pre­vi­ous year: 10.4%).

EBIT in­creased sub­stan­tially by 7.2% to CHF 37.9 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 35.4 mil­lion) due to lower de­pre­ci­a­tion, favourable ex­change rates and, in par­tic­u­lar, the one-off ef­fects re­lated to the site de­vel­op­ment pro­jects in the pre­vi­ous year. Net profit at­trib­ut­able to ORIOR AG share­hold­ers in­creased by 10.6% to CHF 30.2 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 27.3 mil­lion). In the 2022 fi­nan­cial year, the op­er­at­ing cash flow amounted to CHF 59.4 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 51.3 mil­lion, re­stated). This in­crease is mainly due to or­ganic growth as well as the ac­tive man­age­ment of work­ing cap­i­tal. Thanks to the solid op­er­at­ing per­for­mance, the net debt/​EBITDA ra­tio was re­duced slightly from 2.09x to 2.06x, which was in line with plan­ning and de­spite the div­i­dend in­crease and the ac­qui­si­tion of the fi­nal tranche in Ca­su­al­food.

ORIOR seg­ments
Com­pared with a strong pre­vi­ous year, ORI­OR’s Con­ve­nience seg­ment, with its Fredag, Le Pa­tron, Pastinella and Biotta com­pe­tence cen­tres, gen­er­ated 1.2% lower net sales of CHF 220.2 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 222.8 mil­lion). The main rea­sons were the re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion of sales (net book­ing of in­ter­me­di­ary sales) with a cor­re­spond­ing loss of sales of CHF 4.1 mil­lion, as well as the clo­sure of a smaller pro­duc­tion site and the as­so­ci­ated shift of sales to the Re­fine­ment seg­ment. If these two ef­fects were ex­cluded, the seg­ment would have ex­pe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant growth. Pos­i­tive high­lights worth men­tion­ing are the con­tin­ued good per­for­mance and chan­nel ex­pan­sion of the core ranges, the re­bound of the food ser­vice busi­ness in gen­eral, in­clud­ing large cater­ing or­ders of sev­eral thou­sand meals, as well as new list­ings in the plant-based spe­cial­i­ties sec­tor. Strate­gic ca­pac­ity ex­pan­sions within the plant-based prod­uct cat­e­gory were suc­cess­fully com­pleted.

The ORIOR Re­fine­ment seg­ment, with the Rapelli, Al­bert Spiess and Möfag com­pe­tence cen­tres, in­creased net sales by 0.9% to CHF 249.1 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 246.8 mil­lion). As of spring 2022, the ORIOR Group made a con­scious de­ci­sion to stop sales ex­ports worth just over CHF 2 mil­lion per year to Rus­sia. At the same time, his­tor­i­cally low pork prices with cor­re­spond­ing price re­duc­tions put pres­sure on seg­ment sales. The sales shift from the Con­ve­nience seg­ment due to the clo­sure of a smaller site had a pos­i­tive ef­fect. Af­ter tak­ing the in­flu­en­tial fac­tors men­tioned above into ac­count, the Re­fine­ment seg­ment posted a sta­ble per­for­mance, due in large part to the es­tab­lished core prod­uct range. Other note­wor­thy el­e­ments in this con­text were the new de­vel­op­ments and list­ings in the area of smoked spe­cial­i­ties, ba­con and Pure Na­ture ex­pan­sions with ter­roir awards and cross-unit bridge-build­ing ini­tia­tives.

The ORIOR In­ter­na­tional seg­ment, with the Culi­nor Food Group and Ca­su­al­food com­pe­tence cen­tres and Biot­ta’s sis­ter com­pany Gesa, as well as the pack­ing and de­liv­ery plat­form Spiess Eu­rope, in­creased net sales by a very good 13.6% to CHF 189.7 mil­lion in the re­port­ing year (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 167.0 mil­lion), com­pris­ing ex­tra­or­di­nary or­ganic growth of 22.2% and an ex­change rate ef­fect of –8.6%. The largest growth in per­cent­age terms was again achieved by Ca­su­al­food, which was able to suc­cess­fully con­vert in­creas­ing pas­sen­ger fre­quency as well as open ad­di­tional lo­ca­tions at Berlin Air­port. In ab­solute terms, Culi­nor Food Group also grew, mainly due to good vol­ume growth with con­tin­ued en­cour­ag­ing per­for­mance of the new sales chan­nels, cou­pled with nec­es­sary price in­creases trig­gered by higher lo­cal prices for raw ma­te­ri­als and en­ergy. Biot­ta’s sis­ter com­pany Gesa con­tin­ued to ben­e­fit from the trend to­wards or­ganic veg­etable juices, while the high in­fla­tion rate, es­pe­cially in France, sig­nif­i­cantly re­duced de­mand for high-priced prod­ucts at Spiess Eu­rope.

The ORIOR Re­spon­si­bil­ity
On ORI­OR’s rec­om­men­da­tion, the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing voted to en­shrine the im­por­tance of ESG (En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial and Gov­er­nance) in the Com­pa­ny’s Ar­ti­cles of As­so­ci­a­tion. Fol­low­ing this de­ci­sion, the Board of Di­rec­tors ap­pointed an ESG Com­mit­tee from among its mem­bers in au­tumn 2022. The main re­spon­si­bil­ity of this com­mit­tee is to ad­dress the im­por­tance and rel­e­vance of ESG top­ics within a fo­cused frame­work. In au­tumn, ORIOR was also ranked first in Good Cor­po­rate Gov­er­nance by In­rate, and its good CDP “B” rat­ing was also con­firmed. The next GRI Sus­tain­abil­ity Re­port will be pub­lished at the end of April 2023 and will pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on all ini­tia­tives, mea­sures and pro­jects, as well as progress made on ESG is­sues.

At­trac­tive div­i­dend pol­icy with steady in­crease in the ab­solute div­i­dend con­firmed
The Board of Di­rec­tors will be putting for­ward a pro­posal to the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing on 19 April 2023 to dis­trib­ute a div­i­dend of CHF 2.50 per share (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 2.40). The pro­posed div­i­dend con­sists of an or­di­nary div­i­dend in the amount of CHF 1.85 from re­tained earn­ings (sub­ject to with­hold­ing tax) and a div­i­dend from the statu­tory con­tri­bu­tion re­serve (ex­empt from with­hold­ing tax) in the amount of CHF 0.65.

Out­look
We ex­pect con­tin­ued broad-based or­ganic growth for the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year, with the In­ter­na­tional seg­ment re­main­ing the main dri­ver. In the Con­ve­nience seg­ment, we an­tic­i­pate good growth, and per­for­mance at or slightly above the pre­vi­ous year for the Re­fine­ment seg­ment. Per­for­mance in the food ser­vice chan­nel will con­tinue to im­prove; on the prod­uct side we see good op­por­tu­ni­ties in the plant-based and fresh pasta cat­e­gories. Travel vol­ume will con­tinue to pick up, and ad­di­tional new Ca­su­al­food lo­ca­tions will be opened in 2023. Thanks to in­no­va­tions, Culi­nor will con­tinue to strengthen its chan­nel ex­pan­sions, open­ing up ad­di­tional op­por­tu­ni­ties. At the same time, re­spon­si­ble price in­creases to re­flect ris­ing costs will also have a pos­i­tive im­pact on the top line. Over­all, the pos­i­tive po­ten­tials are clearly pre­dom­i­nant.

The guid­ance for the 2023 fi­nan­cial year in­cludes a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in net sales and ab­solute EBITDA growth. It also re­flects the op­por­tu­ni­ties that can be an­tic­i­pated based on cur­rent es­ti­ma­tions in the con­text of a still chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment and its re­lated un­cer­tain­ties. Since in­put costs (en­ergy and raw ma­te­ri­als in gen­eral) and pass­ing on price in­creases are im­por­tant dri­vers on the mar­gin side, they re­main the fo­cus of our mea­sures.

Board of Di­rec­tors
Rolf U. Sut­ter, Chair­man of the Board of Di­rec­tors of ORIOR AG, will – as pre­vi­ously com­mu­ni­cated – not be stand­ing for re-elec­tion. The Board of Di­rec­tors of ORIOR AG will be propos­ing the elec­tion of Remo Brun­schwiler as new Chair­man at the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing on 19 April 2023. Remo Brun­schwiler is a re­mark­able in­di­vid­ual and pos­sesses ex­ten­sive na­tional and in­ter­na­tional ex­pe­ri­ence on high-level man­age­ment com­mit­tees and gov­ern­ing bod­ies. Ad­di­tional in­for­ma­tion can be found on ORI­OR’s web­site and will be in­cluded with the in­vi­ta­tion to the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing.

Dr. iur. Markus R. Neuhaus will not be stand­ing for re-elec­tion at the next An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing on 19 April 2023. Chair­man of the Board of Di­rec­tors Rolf U. Sut­ter: “Markus Neuhaus is a highly com­pe­tent and ded­i­cated col­league and an out­stand­ing as­set to any Board of Di­rec­tors. We wish him the very best for his other man­dates. He de­serves our sin­cer­est grat­i­tude for his ex­tra­or­di­nary work on be­half of ORIOR.”

Our thanks
It was an im­mense plea­sure to or­gan­ise a unique Food Fes­ti­val as part of ORI­OR’s an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions and ex­press our grat­i­tude to our em­ploy­ees, cus­tomers, sup­pli­ers and part­ners. From a busi­ness per­spec­tive, the past year was once again not an easy one. Front lines were fur­ther en­trenched, fu­elled by ris­ing prices and in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures. At the same time, every­one is look­ing for good skilled work­ers. We would like to thank you, our val­ued em­ploy­ees, for your loy­alty and com­mit­ment. Our cus­tomers and sup­pli­ers de­serve our thanks as well for their will­ing­ness to work to­gether with us to find suit­able so­lu­tions. Spe­cial ap­pre­ci­a­tion also ex­tends to our val­ued share­hold­ers for the trust they have placed in ORIOR.

Af­ter more than 24 years – in­clud­ing as CEO for 12 years and then as Chair­man of the com­pany for 12 years – Rolf U. Sut­ter is step­ping down and can look back with pride on his many achieve­ments. His pas­sion, tire­less com­mit­ment, fore­sight, strate­gic in­tu­ition, flair for iden­ti­fy­ing food trends, and his calm and mea­sured lead­er­ship are the hall­marks of his ac­com­plish­ments and his out­stand­ing per­son­al­ity. “You shaped ORIOR in many sig­nif­i­cant ways over the past decades, and to­day it is an in­com­pa­ra­ble and truly unique food & bev­er­age group. Thank you, Rolf!” Your ORIOR.

An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing 2023
The next An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing on 19 April 2023 will take place phys­i­cally, un­less there is any crit­i­cal change to the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. The meet­ing will be held at The Hall (for­merly Sam­sung Hall) in Düben­dorf. All ad­di­tional in­for­ma­tion will be sent out on 27 March 2023 with the in­vi­ta­tion to the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing and will be up­dated on the web­site on an on­go­ing ba­sis.

In­vi­ta­tion to video con­fer­ence
To­day, Wednes­day 8 March 2023, CEO Daniel Lutz and CFO An­dreas Lind­ner will take us through the 2022 fi­nan­cial re­sults in a video con­fer­ence.

Con­fer­ence in Eng­lish: Wednes­day, 8 March 2023, 3:00 pm (CET)
Join via Teams: >> Click here to par­tic­i­pate in the con­fer­ence <<
Join via phone: +41 43 430 76 25 con­fer­ence-ID: 340 238 034#

Con­fer­ence in Ger­man: Wednes­day, 8 March 2023, 10:00 am (CET)
Join via Teams: >> Click here to par­tic­i­pate in the con­fer­ence <<
Join via phone: +41 43 430 76 25 con­fer­ence-ID: 139 125 491#

If you have any or­gan­i­sa­tional ques­tions about the video con­fer­ence or prob­lems with the link, please con­tact: Mara Bach­mann, mara.bach­mann@orior.ch, di­rect line +41 44 308 65 02

Down­load links
>> Full Year Re­port 2022
>> Al­ter­na­tive Per­for­mance Mea­sures Full Year 2022
>> Pre­sen­ta­tion on Full Year re­sults 2022
>> Me­dia im­age gallery

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

In­vestor Cal­en­dar
8 March 2023: pub­li­ca­tion of 2022 fi­nan­cial re­sults and An­nual Re­port
27 March 2023: planned mail­ing of the in­vi­ta­tion to the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing
13 April 2023: share reg­is­ter closes
19 April 2023: An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing
21 April 2023: Ex date
25 April 2023: Pay date
23 Au­gust 2023: pub­li­ca­tion of 2023 Half-Year Re­sults and Half-Year Re­port

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