Ad hoc me­dia re­leases

ORIOR presents broad-based organic growth

Ad hoc an­nounce­ment pur­suant to Art. 53 LR

Zurich, 16 Au­gust 2022

• Strong revenue growth of 5.9% (organic 7.7%) to CHF 309.2 million fuelled by very good sales from the International segment and a continued good performance from the Convenience segment.

• EBITDA amounts to a solid CHF 30.2 million, which corresponds to an EBITDA margin of 9.8%.

• A cumulation of factors ranging from global challenges to a steep increase in input costs and inflationary pressure had an obvious impact on the first half of the year.

• Concentration on steady implementation of ORIOR 2025 Strategy and investments in future growth.

• ESG: All ORIOR Switzerland operations are now climate neutral certified, several rating upgrades; introduction of science-based climate target setting (SBTi) under way.

• Confident 2H outlook: revenue guidance increased, guidance for all other metrics confirmed.

• Milena Mathiuet, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, will join the Executive Committee of ORIOR AG.

ORIOR, the in­ter­na­tion­ally ac­tive Swiss food & bev­er­age group, de­liv­ered good op­er­at­ing re­sults in the first half de­spite a cu­mu­la­tion of ad­verse cir­cum­stances. Proac­tive mea­sures by all af­fected busi­ness op­er­a­tions were in­stru­men­tal for the good Group per­for­mance and is the ba­sis on which man­age­men­t’s con­fi­dent out­look for the sec­ond half rests. In ad­di­tion to the con­tin­ued pos­i­tive trend of the Con­ve­nience seg­ment, above-av­er­age growth was achieved by the In­ter­na­tional seg­ment.

CEO Daniel Lutz: “Our broadly based busi­ness model with a di­verse range of tar­get mar­kets and prod­uct cat­e­gories has once again en­abled ORIOR Group to suc­cess­fully nav­i­gate stormy wa­ters. This struc­tural re­silience en­hances our sta­bil­ity in the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion too. I am of course es­pe­cially pleased that Ca­su­al­food has re­turned to the growth path. We are also mak­ing steady progress in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the ORIOR 2025 strat­egy and fur­ther strength­en­ing our pro­file. As of Jan­u­ary 2022, for ex­am­ple, all com­pe­tence cen­tres in Switzer­land were cer­ti­fied cli­mate neu­tral, two small pro­duc­tion sites were closed within the scope of our site man­age­ment ac­tiv­i­ties and the pro­duc­tion vol­umes af­fected by the clo­sures were suc­cess­fully re­lo­cated. We also ac­knowl­edge the chal­lenges of our times – and are tak­ing timely ac­tion to ad­dress them – for ex­am­ple through our teams of spe­cial­ists within the var­i­ous Cham­pion Groups.”

ORIOR Group in­creased its rev­enues by 5.9% to CHF 309.2 mil­lion in the first half of 2022 (prior-year pe­riod: CHF 291.9 mil­lion). Re­ported growth con­sisted of very good or­ganic growth of 7.7% and a neg­a­tive ex­change rate ef­fect of 1.8%. Growth was dri­ven by the Con­ve­nience seg­men­t’s sus­tained strong per­for­mance in plant­based, re­gional and or­ganic prod­uct cat­e­gories and by higher vol­umes at the In­ter­na­tional seg­ment in the Benelux re­gion and a strong and steady re­bound in the food travel busi­ness since April 2022. Rev­enues at the Re­fine­ment seg­ment were al­most in line with the fig­ure from the prior-year pe­riod.

The Group’s gross profit mar­gin in­creased from 44.5% to 45.7%, thanks in par­tic­u­lar to the good per­for­mance of high-mar­gin prod­uct lines and the re­cov­ery in the food travel busi­ness. Ris­ing in­put costs were par­tially off­set by proac­tive pro­cure­ment and re­spon­si­ble, stag­gered price ad­just­ments from the spring of 2022 on­wards. EBITDA for the first half of 2022 amounted to CHF 30.2 mil­lion de­spite lower pan­demic-re­lated gov­ern­ment aid, com­pared to CHF 31.1 mil­lion in the prior-year pe­riod, and the re­sult­ing EBITDA mar­gin was 9.8%. EBIT for the pe­riod showed a year-on-year in­crease of 2.0% to CHF 17.5 mil­lion, which cor­re­sponds to an EBIT mar­gin of 5.6%. Net profit amounted to CHF 13.0 mil­lion ver­sus CHF 13.5 mil­lion for the first half of 2021; the net profit mar­gin re­sulted at 4.2%. 

Cash flow from op­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties amounted to CHF 26.7 mil­lion (first-half 2021: CHF 27.0 mil­lion), which re­sulted in a cash con­ver­sion ra­tio of 88.5%. The net debt ra­tio was at 2.14x, which is still well be­low ORI­OR’s tar­get of < 2.5x; the eq­uity ra­tio af­ter good­will off­set­ting rose to 20.2%.

ORIOR seg­ments
The ORIOR Con­ve­nience seg­ment with the Fredag, Le Pa­tron, Pastinella and Biotta com­pe­tence cen­tres gen­er­ated rev­enues of CHF 109.8 mil­lion and achieved an or­ganic growth rate of 1.6% de­spite the re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion of CHF 2.2 mil­lion in rev­enue. Seg­ment growth was par­tic­u­larly strong in its tar­geted growth cat­e­gories of plant-based and or­ganic spe­cial­i­ties. ORIOR was pleased to re­ceive var­i­ous awards from in­de­pen­dent food cer­ti­fi­ca­tion or­gan­i­sa­tions in­clud­ing very good la­bels for sev­eral plant-based spe­cial­i­ties in recog­ni­tion of their high qual­ity, culi­nary as­pects and nu­tri­tional value. Biot­ta’s steady growth over the pe­riod fu­elled by its much broader dis­tri­b­u­tion plat­form and other fac­tors, and the pleas­ing mar­ket up­take of its new prod­ucts (such as “Well­ness Juice Day” and the in­tro­duc­tion of var­i­ous new Deme­ter juices) con­tributed to this growth. Within the frame­work of the com­mu­ni­cated plant de­vel­op­ment, a smaller pro­duc­tion site of the Con­ve­nience seg­ment was closed. As a re­sult, part of the vol­ume and the cor­re­spond­ing sales have been shifted to Rapelli in the Re­fine­ment seg­ment since May 2022.

The ORIOR Re­fine­ment seg­ment with the Rapelli, Al­bert Spiess and Möfag com­pe­tence cen­tres gen­er­ated rev­enues of CHF 124.7 mil­lion, a slight re­duc­tion of 0.4% from the prior-year level. All the seg­men­t’s com­pe­tence cen­tres re­ported higher rev­enues in Switzer­land. The slight de­cline in seg­ment rev­enues is largely at­trib­uted to the re­tail chan­nel, given the on­go­ing nor­mal­i­sa­tion of con­sump­tion pat­terns and var­i­ous ad­just­ments to the cor­re­spond­ing prod­uct range, the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of ex­ports to Rus­sia, and lower sales of Bünd­ner spe­cial­i­ties in France. At­ten­tion is drawn to na­tion­wide, week-long pro­mo­tional cam­paigns for Rapelli spe­cial­i­ties in var­i­ous sales chan­nels and to Al­bert Spiess’s “Pure Na­ture” prod­uct line, which is made with all-nat­ural in­gre­di­ents. Since May 2022, the sales of the afore­men­tioned vol­ume trans­fer from the Con­ve­nience seg­ment have been recog­nised at Rapelli.

The ORIOR In­ter­na­tional seg­ment with the Culi­nor Food Group and Ca­su­al­food com­pe­tence cen­tres, Biot­ta’s sub­sidiary Gesa, and Spiess Eu­rope, a plat­form for the fi­nal pro­cess­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion, re­ported a 19.0% year-on-year in­crease in rev­enues to CHF 88.9 mil­lion for the first half of 2022. Re­ported growth con­sisted of or­ganic growth of 26.2% and a neg­a­tive cur­rency ex­change ef­fect of 7.2%. Culi­nor Food Group, Ca­su­al­food and Gesa re­ported sub­stan­tially higher rev­enues. Culi­nor’s ex­cep­tion­ally strong dou­ble-digit growth is par­tic­u­larly pleas­ing and was largely dri­ven by newly launched prod­ucts. At the same time, the ex­treme in­crease in en­ergy prices and gen­er­ally high in­fla­tion in the Benelux coun­tries rep­re­sented very chal­leng­ing fac­tors. Nec­es­sary price ad­just­ments have been ne­go­ti­ated and are be­ing im­ple­mented in stages as of June 2022. Ca­su­al­food re­turned to the growth path and has shown very pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments at all open points of sale since April 2022. Cur­rently 70% of its points of sale are open; foot traf­fic at these lo­ca­tions is not quite back to pre-pan­demic lev­els, but the sales re­ceipts have moved higher, even above the pre-pan­demic lev­els. A tight labour mar­ket has had an im­pact on Ca­su­al­food’s air­port lo­ca­tions. The re­cently opened Ter­mi­nal 2 of the Berlin Air­port in­cludes the three suc­cess­ful con­cepts “Good­man & Fil­ippo”, “Her­man­n’s” and “Beans & Bar­ley”.

ESG – The ORIOR Re­spon­si­bil­ity
ORIOR an­nounced its new cli­mate tar­get at the be­gin­ning of the year and ORI­OR’s op­er­a­tions in Switzer­land have been cer­ti­fied cli­mate neu­tral since Jan­u­ary 2022. From 2025, its for­eign com­pe­tence cen­tres will like­wise be cli­mate neu­tral cer­ti­fied. ORI­OR’s am­bi­tion to be cer­ti­fied net zero by 2050 un­der­scores its com­mit­ment to the Swiss gov­ern­men­t’s cli­mate poli­cies and to the Paris Agree­ment. Man­age­ment plans to place ORIOR Group’s cli­mate ac­tion poli­cies on a sci­en­tific ba­sis by adopt­ing the Sci­ence Based Tar­gets Ini­tia­tive (SBTi) within the com­ing two years. Do­ing so will al­low the im­pact of the up­stream and down­stream value chains to also be taken into ac­count. These are cur­rently not sys­tem­at­i­cally mon­i­tored and tracked. Ca­su­al­food un­veiled its sus­tain­abil­ity con­cept in early 2022 and now all of ORI­OR’s com­pe­tence cen­tres have in­tro­duced sus­tain­abil­ity man­age­ment poli­cies. This ac­tion has also been taken to sup­port prepara­tory work to com­ply with new non-fi­nan­cial re­port­ing re­quire­ments. Fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on cur­rent sus­tain­abil­ity ac­tion plans, progress and chal­lenges with re­spect to ORI­OR’s sus­tain­abil­ity strat­egy is given in the Com­pa­ny’s fourth Sus­tain­abil­ity Re­port, which was pub­lished in May 2022. Our in­tense work and ef­forts in this area are also re­flected in the ESG rat­ing up­grades which ORIOR is very pleased to have been awarded by ex­ter­nal agen­cies.

Out­look
Over­all, we ex­pect to sus­tain our broadly based or­ganic growth. The sit­u­a­tion with in­put costs is likely to worsen, es­pe­cially with re­gard to en­ergy costs and cer­tain raw ma­te­ri­als, and changes in con­sumer spend­ing as a re­sult of higher in­fla­tion are likely to be­come more ac­cen­tu­ated. Growth in the tra­di­tional ho­tel and restau­rant chan­nels is be­ing held back by acute labour short­ages. The travel food busi­ness had a suc­cess­ful start into the sec­ond half of 2022. The re­tail busi­ness is re­turn­ing to pre-pan­demic lev­els. The Con­ve­nience seg­ment will re­main on a growth path thanks to strong, trend­ing cat­e­gories such as plant-based prod­ucts. The two In­ter­na­tional com­pe­tence cen­tres, Culi­nor Food Group and Ca­su­al­food, will like­wise con­tinue to grow.

Based on the good top-line growth from the first half of 2022 and the con­fi­dent out­look for the sec­ond half of 2022, full-year rev­enue guid­ance has been in­creased to CHF 645 to 660 mil­lion (pre­vi­ously CHF 639 to 654 mil­lion). Op­er­at­ing prof­itabil­ity (EBITDA mar­gin) will con­tinue to be im­pacted in the sec­ond half of 2022 by the cu­mu­la­tive in­flu­ences of the chal­leng­ing busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment. The EBITDA mar­gin guid­ance of 10.0 to 10.3% for the 2022 fis­cal year is con­firmed thanks to the good per­for­mance of high-mar­gin cat­e­gories and the sus­tained greater flex­i­bil­ity of the cost base achieved within the scope of the New Nor­mal ini­tia­tive.

Change in ORIOR Group’s Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee
Milena Math­i­uet, Chief Cor­po­rate Af­fairs Of­fi­cer, will join the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the ORIOR Group ef­fec­tive 1 Sep­tem­ber 2022. In ad­di­tion to In­vestor Re­la­tions and Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, she has been re­spon­si­ble for the com­pre­hen­sive area of ESG and has been ac­tively in­volved in strate­gic top­ics as well as for com­pli­ance is­sues for many years. We are pleased to ap­point such an ex­pe­ri­enced, ac­com­plished and com­pe­tent pro­fes­sional to the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee.

Thank you
As the pan­demic slowly winds down, we find our­selves faced with a cu­mu­la­tion of new chal­leng­ing fac­tors on the in­ter­na­tional stage and in the form of sharply ris­ing in­put costs and in­fla­tion. Ded­i­cated and proac­tive em­ploy­ees with a strong sense of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion are needed to meet these con­stant high de­mands. We thank our em­ploy­ees for their un­tir­ing ef­forts. We thank our cus­tomers, busi­ness part­ners and sup­pli­ers for their col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ner­ship dur­ing this pe­riod of ris­ing prices and in­fla­tion. Spe­cial thanks also goes to our share­hold­ers for their en­dur­ing trust and loy­alty.

In­vi­ta­tion to video con­fer­ence
This Tues­day, 16 Au­gust 2022, at 3.00 pm CEST, CEO Daniel Lutz and CFO An­dreas Lind­ner will hold a Teams video con­fer­ence to pre­sent the first half 2022.

Eng­lish con­fer­ence call, 16 Au­gust 2022, at 3.00 pm CEST:
Join via Teams: >> Click here to par­tic­i­pate in the con­fer­ence <<
Join via phone: +41 43 430 76 25, con­fer­ence-ID: 940 626 655#

Ger­man con­fer­ence call, 16 Au­gust 2022, at 10.00 am CEST:
Join via Teams: >> Click here to par­tic­i­pate in the con­fer­ence <<
Join via phone: +41 43 430 76 25, con­fer­ence-ID: 172 521 372#

If you have any or­gan­i­sa­tional ques­tions re­gard­ing 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
>> Half Year Re­port 2022
>> Al­ter­na­tive Per­for­mance Mea­sures Half Year 2022
>> GRI Sus­tain­abil­ity Re­port 2021
>> Pre­sen­ta­tion on Half Year re­sults
>> 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 the full year re­sults and the Full Year Re­port 2022
19 April 2023: An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing of ORIOR AG

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