Ad hoc me­dia re­leases

ORIOR con­tin­ues its growth path

Ad hoc an­nounce­ment pur­suant to Art. 53 LR

Zurich, 23 Au­gust 2023

• Net sales increase by 0.9% (organic 2.4%) to CHF 312.1 million.

• Very good performance of the International segment and the Food Service channel.

• EBITDA rises 0.8% to CHF 30.5 million; solid EBITDA-margin of 9.8% at previous year’s level.

• ESG: SBTi Commitment Letter signed; formulation of the science-based targets has started.

• Outlook: continued organic growth expected. Guidance is confirmed.

The in­ter­na­tion­ally ac­tive Swiss food & bev­er­age group ORIOR has re­ported a pleas­ing first half of 2023. Its re­sults, which are in line with ex­pec­ta­tions, were in­flu­enced by the on­go­ing geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions and the re­sult­ing dis­rup­tion and as­so­ci­ated in­creased in­put costs. High in­fla­tion has cre­ated un­cer­tainty and lim­ited pur­chas­ing power in the sales mar­kets. The Group suc­cess­fully tack­led the var­i­ous chal­lenges it faced once again through its broad di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion into dif­fer­ent prod­uct cat­e­gories, a seg­mented client port­fo­lio, and its com­pe­tence cen­tres with strong lo­cal net­works. The In­ter­na­tional seg­ment and the en­tire Food Ser­vice chan­nel per­formed par­tic­u­larly im­pres­sive.

The ORIOR Group’s net sales in the first half of 2023 in­creased by 0.9% to CHF 312.1 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 309.2 mil­lion). This was based on solid or­ganic growth of 2.4% and a neg­a­tive ex­change rate ef­fect of –1.4% (sales at con­stant ex­change rates: CHF 316.5 mil­lion). The main dri­vers for this pos­i­tive per­for­mance were the In­ter­na­tional seg­ment with out­stand­ing growth of its prod­uct and con­cept ranges, as well as the con­tin­ued favourable progress made by the Food Ser­vice chan­nel. When com­pared with the same pe­riod of the pre­vi­ous year, growth was pri­mar­ily dri­ven by re­spon­si­ble and ap­pro­pri­ate price ad­just­ments.

The Group’s gross mar­gin rose by 314 ba­sis points to 48.8% due mainly to sales growth in the In­ter­na­tional seg­ment, in­clud­ing travel gas­tron­omy with its higher gross mar­gins based on its busi­ness model. 

The on­go­ing dis­rup­tion caused by the chal­leng­ing geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Eu­rope con­tin­ued to in­flu­ence per­for­mance. In­put costs re­mained high, while in­fla­tion rates in Eu­ro­pean sales mar­kets barely edged down­wards. A part of the in­creased costs were off­set by im­proved ef­fi­ciency and re­spon­si­ble price ad­just­ments. For­ward-look­ing pur­chas­ing man­age­ment also had a pos­i­tive im­pact on prof­itabil­ity. Fur­ther­more, the pre­vi­ous year’s re­sults in­cluded one-off ef­fects from pan­demic-re­lated aid and re­lief pro­vided by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment of CHF 2.5 mil­lion. De­spite these fac­tors, this year’s EBITDA rose by 0.8% to CHF 30.5 mil­lion, lead­ing to an un­changed EBITDA mar­gin of 9.8%. EBIT de­creased by –4.0% to CHF 16.8 mil­lion com­pared with the first half of 2022, cor­re­spond­ing to an EBIT mar­gin of 5.4% (pre­vi­ous year: 5.6%). The main rea­sons were higher de­pre­ci­a­tion and amor­ti­sa­tion re­lated to in­vest­ments in fu­ture, high-mar­gin and in­no­v­a­tive prod­uct cat­e­gories. The Group’s net profit of CHF 12.9 mil­lion re­mained vir­tu­ally un­changed (first-half 2022: CHF 13.0 mil­lion). The profit mar­gin was 4.1% com­pared with 4.2% in the pre­vi­ous year. The fi­nan­cial re­sult im­proved by CHF 0.6 mil­lion thanks to lower for­eign cur­rency losses.

Cash flow from op­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties amounted to CHF 18.8 mil­lion (first-half 2022: CHF 27.3 mil­lion). The pri­mary rea­son for this de­crease was the change in net cur­rent as­sets due to lower stock in the pre­vi­ous year as a re­sult of the pan­demic, cou­pled with the par­tially in­ten­tional build-up of in­ven­tory. The net debt ra­tio in­creased min­i­mally to 2.18x due to div­i­dend pay­ment but re­mains well be­low the ORIOR tar­get level of <2.5x. The eq­uity ra­tio af­ter good­will off­set­ting rose to 21.4% (first-half 2022: 20.2%).

ORIOR seg­ments
ORI­OR’s Con­ve­nience seg­ment, with its Fredag, Le Pa­tron, Pastinella and Biotta com­pe­tence cen­tres, gen­er­ated net sales of CHF 109.8 mil­lion, match­ing the pre­vi­ous year (first-half 2022: CHF 109.8 mil­lion), and did not com­pletely ful­fil ex­pec­ta­tions. Ex­clud­ing the one-off ef­fect from the vol­ume trans­fer of CHF –1.7 mil­lion to the Re­fine­ment seg­ment (im­pacted pe­riod: May 2022 to April 2023), the Con­ve­nience seg­ment would have recorded growth of 1.5%. Fresh pasta man­u­fac­turer Pastinella per­formed par­tic­u­larly well thanks to the suc­cess­ful growth of its prod­uct range and sales chan­nel in the Food Ser­vice sec­tor. The re­tail busi­ness grew slightly com­pared with the same pe­riod of the pre­vi­ous year. Prod­uct-wise there was par­tic­u­larly higher de­mand for fresh pasta and poul­try spe­cial­i­ties. The turnover from plant-based prod­ucts was not sat­is­fac­tory, mainly due to poor sales in the UK. How­ever, the struc­tural trend to­wards “flex­i­tar­ian” di­ets re­mains in­tact and is re­flected, among other things, in new list­ings, both in re­tail and var­i­ous food ser­vice chan­nels.

The ORIOR Re­fine­ment seg­ment, with the Rapelli, Al­bert Spiess and Möfag com­pe­tence cen­tres, recorded a de­cline in net sales from CHF 124.7 mil­lion to CHF 119.3 mil­lion, cor­re­spond­ing to –4.3% The pri­mary rea­sons for this were low pork prices and in­fla­tion-re­lated weaker de­mand, lead­ing to fewer ex­ports to France (in­ter­com­pany sales with Spiess Eu­rope). In the re­tail chan­nel, the re­duc­tion of sale pro­mo­tions by re­tail­ers made it­self felt. Nev­er­the­less, the re­tail chan­nel did slightly bet­ter than ex­pected. Es­pe­cially note­wor­thy are the good sales of the Rapelli ter­roir spe­cial­i­ties, from June 2023, the grill spe­cial­i­ties and gen­er­ally or­ganic prod­ucts and as­sort­ments with sus­tain­abil­ity la­bels. Sales from the afore­men­tioned vol­ume trans­fer from the Con­ve­nience seg­ment were posted at Rapelli dur­ing the first four months of the year, while the dis­con­tin­ued sales to Rus­sia had a min­i­mal neg­a­tive im­pact on net sales. If these two ef­fects, amount­ing to CHF 1.1 mil­lion, were ex­cluded, the Re­fine­ment seg­ment would have re­ported neg­a­tive or­ganic growth of –5.2%.

The ORIOR In­ter­na­tional seg­ment, com­pris­ing the Culi­nor Food Group and Ca­su­al­food com­pe­tence cen­tres and Biot­ta’s sis­ter com­pany Gesa, as well as the slic­ing, pack­ag­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion plat­form Spiess Eu­rope, grew its net sales by 6.0% to CHF 94.2 mil­lion com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year (first-half 2022: CHF 88.9 mil­lion). Or­ganic growth reached a very good 11.0%, while the ex­change rate ef­fect was –5.0%. The main dri­ver was out­stand­ing dou­ble-digit growth by Ca­su­al­food with the open­ing of ad­di­tional out­lets as well as very good growth by the Culi­nor Food Group thanks to cus­tomer growth and the nec­es­sary pass-through of in­creased in­put costs. Due to in­fla­tion Spiess Eu­rope had to ab­sorb a sig­nif­i­cant drop in turnover, while Gesa was also un­able to match the pre­vi­ous year’s level and, dri­ven by the weak US dol­lar, ex­pe­ri­enced a re­duc­tion in sales, pri­mar­ily in the ex­ports sec­tor.

The ORIOR Re­spon­si­bil­ity
In April 2023, ORIOR pub­lished its fifth sus­tain­abil­ity re­port in ac­cor­dance with the GRI (Global Re­port­ing Ini­tia­tive), pro­vid­ing a com­pre­hen­sive de­scrip­tion of its mea­sures, progress and chal­lenges in the area of sus­tain­abil­ity. Af­ter join­ing the Sci­ence Based Tar­get Ini­tia­tive, it has started work­ing on the de­vel­op­ment of sci­ence-based tar­gets (SBTs). The start­ing point is de­ter­min­ing the cur­rent emis­sions (cor­po­rate car­bon foot­print, in­clud­ing Scopes 1, 2 and 3) of the en­tire ORIOR Group. The sig­nif­i­cance of ESG (En­vi­ron­men­tal So­cial Gov­er­nance) is also demon­strated by the rapidly in­creas­ing num­ber of new rat­ings, analy­ses and re­port­ing stan­dards com­ing onto the mar­ket. ORIOR fo­cuses on what it con­sid­ers to be the seven most im­por­tant rat­ings for its stake­hold­ers right now. With re­gard to stan­dards, the GRI will be ad­hered to for the time be­ing and, as the new le­gal re­quire­ments are be­ing im­ple­mented, de­ci­sions will be made on how to pro­ceed fur­ther. In ad­di­tion to the new re­quire­ments un­der Swiss law, the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the TCFD (Task Force on Cli­mate-Re­lated Fi­nan­cial Dis­clo­sures) and, af­ter a cer­tain pe­riod, the Cor­po­rate Sus­tain­abil­ity Re­port­ing Di­rec­tive (CSRD) are par­tic­u­larly rel­e­vant for ORIOR in this con­text. An ini­tial gap analy­sis has been com­pleted. We are cur­rently work­ing on the dou­ble ma­te­ri­al­ity, which will be ad­dressed in sev­eral work­shops at­tended by key peo­ple in the com­pany. The re­sult­ing top­ics will be the ba­sis for our ap­proach to all new re­quire­ments.

Out­look
De­spite the per­sis­tently chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment, we ex­pect fur­ther or­ganic growth for the sec­ond half of the year. In terms of our chan­nels, the Food Ser­vice sec­tor, in­clud­ing travel gas­tron­omy, looks set to per­form par­tic­u­larly strongly. We also ex­pect the re­tail busi­ness to grow at the pre­vi­ous year’s level in Switzer­land and to keep ex­pand­ing in Bel­gium. Prof­itabil­ity will con­tinue to be af­fected by in­ter­na­tional dis­rup­tion. The wide-rang­ing mea­sures taken to in­crease ef­fi­ciency and our sales mix with growth in higher-mar­gin prod­uct and cus­tomer groups will sup­port prof­itabil­ity. Over­all, we an­tic­i­pate a solid sec­ond half-year and con­firm the guid­ance for the 2023 fi­nan­cial year.

Our thanks
Our em­ploy­ees con­stantly face high de­mands. In­ter­na­tional up­heavals and the short­age of skilled work­ers are plac­ing ad­di­tional strain on the ex­ist­ing teams. Our em­ploy­ees carry out their work with enor­mous com­mit­ment, gen­uine pas­sion and joy. We would like to ex­press our grat­i­tude for this. It is im­pres­sive and a source of pride to see what we can over­come and achieve to­gether. We would also like to take this op­por­tu­nity to thank our cus­tomers and busi­ness part­ners for their re­li­able col­lab­o­ra­tion, and our in­vestors and share­hold­ers for their trust and loy­alty.

In­vi­ta­tion to video con­fer­ence
To­day, Wednes­day 23 Au­gust 2023, CEO Daniel Lutz and CFO An­dreas Lind­ner will take us through the 2023 half-year re­sults in team video con­fer­ences.

Tele­phone con­fer­ence in Eng­lish: Wednes­day, 23 Au­gust 2023, 3:00pm (CEST)
> Tak­ing part via Teams: >> Click here to par­tic­i­pate in the con­fer­ence <<
   Con­fer­ence ID: 392 306 688 101, Pass­code: sqAgEB
> Tak­ing part by tele­phone: +41 43 216 97 36, con­fer­ence ID: 861 061 388#

Tele­phone con­fer­ence in Ger­man: Wednes­day, 23 Au­gust 2023, 10:00am (CEST)
> Tak­ing part via Teams: >> Click here to par­tic­i­pate in the con­fer­ence <<
   Con­fer­ence ID: 353 776 629 977, Pass­code: A5F5wG
> Tak­ing part by tele­phone: +41 43 216 97 36, con­fer­ence ID: 759 055 343#

If you have any or­gan­i­sa­tional ques­tions about the video con­fer­ence or prob­lems with the link, please con­tact: Ur­sula Weder, ur­sula.weder@orior.ch, di­rect line +41 44 308 65 10.

Down­load links
>> Half Year Re­port 2023
>> Al­ter­na­tive Per­for­mance Mea­sures Half Year 2023
>> Pre­sen­ta­tion of 2023 half-year re­sults
>> GRI Sus­tain­abil­ity Re­port 2022
>> Photo gallery for the me­dia

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

In­vestor agenda
13 March 2024: Pub­li­ca­tion of 2023 fi­nan­cial re­sults and An­nual Re­port
23 May 2024: An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing of ORIOR AG

Archive me­dia re­leases: