Ad hoc me­dia re­leases

ORIOR an­nounces far-reach­ing strate­gic mea­sures and pre­sents a first half of 2025 in line with ex­pec­ta­tions

Ad hoc an­nounce­ment pur­suant to Art. 53 LR

Zurich, 21 Au­gust 2025

• ORIOR has adopted a far-reaching package of measures to ensure sustainable strategic success.

• The goal is to reduce debt by an amount in the high double-digit millions over the next 18 months by improving results and achieving extraordinary earnings.

• The half-year results for 2025 are in line with expectations, with positive free cash flow enabling a reduction in net debt.

• Guidance for the 2025 financial year will be specified.

The in­ter­na­tion­ally ac­tive Swiss food and bev­er­age group ORIOR is ini­ti­at­ing pi­o­neer­ing and far-reach­ing mea­sures: Al­bert Spiess will be re­struc­tured over the next twelve months. An eval­u­a­tion of all strate­gic op­tions for the Culi­nor Food Group com­pe­tence cen­tre, in­clud­ing the pos­si­ble sale of this busi­ness unit, has been ini­ti­ated. The ad­min­is­tra­tive and or­gan­i­sa­tional struc­ture of the ORIOR Group will also be stream­lined and sim­pli­fied. The pack­age of mea­sures that has been im­ple­mented fo­cuses on re­duc­ing debt, strength­en­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness and mar­ket po­si­tion, and sim­pli­fy­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tional struc­ture. At the same time, ORIOR is pre­sent­ing its re­sults for the first half of 2025, which are slightly bet­ter than ex­pected in terms of sales, but still strongly in­flu­enced by the 2024 fi­nan­cial year.

Sharp­en­ing the over­all di­rec­tion
ORIOR car­ried out an in-depth analy­sis and as­sess­ment of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion and the ex­pected mar­ket de­vel­op­ments. The ex­ist­ing di­rec­tion of the ORIOR Group is con­sid­ered sound in prin­ci­ple but does re­quire clear sharp­en­ing. A key el­e­ment of this sharp­en­ing is a stronger fo­cus on the Swiss mar­ket. In the In­ter­na­tional busi­ness seg­ment, the em­pha­sis will be on se­lect ac­tiv­i­ties. It has not been pos­si­ble to re­alise the in­tended syn­er­gies with the Culi­nor com­pe­tence cen­tre in Bel­gium since its takeover by ORIOR in 2016. Based on this ra­tio­nale, all strate­gic op­tions for Culi­nor, in­clud­ing a sale of the com­pany, are be­ing eval­u­ated. The Biotta af­fil­i­ate Gesa, based in Ger­many, is con­sid­ered a strate­gi­cally im­por­tant round­ing-off and will con­tinue to be ex­panded. The grow­ing and prof­itable seg­ment of Ca­su­al­food out­lets at Eu­ro­pean air­ports will be fur­ther de­vel­oped as well. ORI­OR’s stake in the Ital­ian pre­mium pasta man­u­fac­turer Gaetarelli will be in­creased as planned, thus strength­en­ing the de­vel­op­ment of our pasta port­fo­lio in Switzer­land and Eu­rope.

Re­align­ing the Re­fine­ment seg­ment
The sig­nif­i­cant Re­fine­ment seg­ment with Al­bert Spiess AG, which has been in­suf­fi­ciently prof­itable for a long time, needs to be re­aligned. The pres­sure on prof­itabil­ity at Al­bert Spiess has in­ten­si­fied in re­cent years due to the sharp rise in raw ma­te­r­ial prices, which could only be par­tially passed through, and the in­ven­tory ad­just­ments re­quired in 2024. In its cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion, the com­pany is no longer sus­tain­able.

Over the next twelve months, the man­u­fac­tur­ing of all Al­bert Spiess prod­ucts that have no di­rect link to the Graubün­den re­gion will be grad­u­ally trans­ferred to Rapelli in Stabio (TI). As a re­sult, the pro­duc­tion site in Schiers will be re­duced to a min­i­mum, and the Ganda di­rect shop in Landquart will be closed. As of to­day, around 90 of the 130 em­ploy­ees in Schiers will be di­rectly af­fected by the re­struc­tur­ing. This planned re­or­gan­i­sa­tion is both dras­tic and dif­fi­cult. How­ever, it ap­pears nec­es­sary in or­der to pre­serve the Al­bert Spiess core prod­uct group and brand and re­turn the com­pany to a sus­tain­able eco­nomic level. A so­cial plan is to be drawn up for the em­ploy­ees af­fected in or­der to mit­i­gate any pos­si­ble neg­a­tive eco­nomic and so­cial con­se­quences. These changes should have only a min­i­mal ef­fect on cus­tomers.

Sim­pli­fy­ing the Group struc­ture
The le­gal struc­ture of the ORIOR Group will be sim­pli­fied in or­der to op­ti­mise ad­min­is­tra­tive and op­er­a­tional processes, in­crease ef­fi­ciency, and re­duce costs. The cor­re­spond­ing ad­just­ments will take place in the com­ing months. These in­clude the planned merger of Al­bert Spiess AG and Rapelli SA into one com­pany as part of the re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Re­fine­ment seg­ment.

Sub­stan­tial debt re­duc­tion
The sale of prop­er­ties not es­sen­tial to op­er­a­tions and the sale and lease­back of op­er­a­tional prop­er­ties will fur­ther con­tribute to debt re­duc­tion. Si­mul­ta­ne­ously, new con­tracts have been signed at at­trac­tive terms to se­cure key op­er­a­tional prop­er­ties for the long term. In con­junc­tion with the mea­sures men­tioned above, the Board of Di­rec­tors ex­pects to re­duce debt by an amount in the high dou­ble-digit mil­lions within the next 18 months.

Thanks to op­er­a­tional op­ti­mi­sa­tions and a fo­cus on Switzer­land and se­lect Eu­ro­pean ac­tiv­i­ties, there will be suf­fi­cient funds avail­able to pro­mote growth and in­no­v­a­tive strength.

ORIOR is con­vinced that the mea­sures as a whole will sus­tain­ably strengthen its cap­i­tal and earn­ings power as well as its com­pet­i­tive and mar­ket po­si­tion, growth po­ten­tial and re­silience. 

Half Year Re­sults 2025
The half-year re­sults for 2025 are still strongly im­pacted by the ef­fects of the 2024 fi­nan­cial year. The ORIOR Group’s net sales in the first half of 2025 de­clined by –2.9% to CHF 304.9 mil­lion com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year (H1 2024: CHF 314.0 mil­lion). Or­ganic growth amounted to –1.8%, with –0.6% at­trib­ut­able to ex­change rate ef­fects and –0.5% to di­vest­ment ef­fects. The main dri­vers were the sale of the Al­bert Spiess gas­tron­omy de­pots and ef­fects from the ten­ders and con­tracts lost in the pre­vi­ous year. These legacy is­sues, to­gether with high raw ma­te­r­ial costs, also had a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on prof­itabil­ity. EBITDA reached CHF 16.3 mil­lion (H1 2024: CHF 22.9 mil­lion), cor­re­spond­ing to an EBITDA mar­gin of 5.4% (H1 2024: 7.3%).

Cash flow from op­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties im­proved sig­nif­i­cantly thanks to the op­ti­mi­sa­tion of net work­ing cap­i­tal and amounted to CHF 16.0 mil­lion (H1 2024: CHF 13.0 mil­lion). Cash flow from in­vest­ing ac­tiv­i­ties de­creased from CHF –26.2 mil­lion in the first half of 2024 to CHF –5.2 mil­lion. As a re­sult, free cash flow im­proved markedly to CHF 10.7 mil­lion (H1 2024: CHF –13.2 mil­lion) and con­tributed sub­stan­tially to debt re­duc­tion.

Net debt was brought down to CHF 173.3 mil­lion (31.12.2024: CHF 181.4 mil­lion), but cur­rently still stands at an un­sat­is­fac­tory 5.2x EBITDA (ad­justed). This means that as of the re­port­ing date, it was sig­nif­i­cantly above the tar­get level of < 2.5. An ex­ten­sion of the credit fa­cil­ity agree­ment un­til 30.09.2029 was agreed with the bank syn­di­cate, the le­gal doc­u­men­ta­tion is be­ing pre­pared.

The Con­ve­nience seg­ment, with its Fredag, Le Pa­tron, Pastinella and Biotta com­pe­tence cen­tres, re­alised net sales of CHF 98.5 mil­lion (H1 2024: CHF 104.7 mil­lion). This de­vel­op­ment was due mainly to ef­fects from the ten­der losses dur­ing the 2024 fi­nan­cial year, some of which only took ef­fect in the first half of 2025. The gen­er­ally good de­vel­op­ment in the food ser­vice chan­nels was pos­i­tive.

The Re­fine­ment seg­ment, with its Rapelli, Al­bert Spiess and Möfag com­pe­tence cen­tres, in­creased net sales by a healthy 3.4% to CHF 125.4 mil­lion (H1 2024: CHF 121.3 mil­lion), de­spite a di­vest­ment ef­fect of ap­prox­i­mately CHF 1.6 mil­lion. Strong per­for­mances by Ti­cino char­cu­terie spe­cial­i­ties and an­tipasti as well as the Möfag range were par­tic­u­larly note­wor­thy.

The In­ter­na­tional seg­ment, com­pris­ing the Culi­nor Food Group and Ca­su­al­food com­pe­tence cen­tres and the Biotta af­fil­i­ate Gesa, as well as the slic­ing, pack­ag­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion plat­form Spiess Eu­rope, re­alised net sales of CHF 95.0 mil­lion com­pared with the strong per­for­mance in the same pe­riod in the pre­vi­ous year (H1 2024: CHF 98.9 mil­lion). Or­ganic growth amounted to –1.9%, due to the slightly weaker per­for­mance of the Culi­nor Food Group and Ca­su­al­food; ex­change rate had an ad­di­tional neg­a­tive im­pact of –2.1%.

ORIOR Group key fig­ures – First half of 2025

Out­look
Some of the mea­sures that have been im­ple­mented will be com­pleted in the sec­ond half of 2025. As a re­sult of slightly bet­ter-than-ex­pected or­ganic growth in the first half of 2025 and new in­no­va­tions in­tro­duced to the mar­ket, the sales guid­ance has been ad­justed to be­tween –2% and –4% in­stead of the pre­vi­ous range of –4% to –6%. The planned re­struc­tur­ing at Al­bert Spiess is ex­pected to in­flu­ence ef­fi­ciency in the short term (trans­fer costs). Fur­ther­more, slight de­lays in the open­ing of new out­lets at air­ports (pre-open­ing costs) will have a min­i­mal im­pact on the EBITDA mar­gin. Con­se­quently, we are ex­pect­ing an EBITDA mar­gin of be­tween 5.9% and 6.3% (pre­vi­ously 6%–6.4%).

The mea­sures now ini­ti­ated set an im­por­tant and nec­es­sary course for the fu­ture. Core busi­ness op­er­a­tions re­main sta­ble, and the clear strate­gic fo­cus will fur­ther de­velop and re­in­force them. The fo­cus will re­main on re­duc­ing debt, strength­en­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness and mar­ket po­si­tion, and sim­pli­fy­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tional struc­ture.

Our thanks
Our sin­cere thanks go to all em­ploy­ees of the ORIOR Group as they sup­port and help shape the path we have cho­sen. It is not an easy process and will re­quire strong iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and daily com­mit­ment. We would also like to take this op­por­tu­nity to thank our cus­tomers and busi­ness part­ners for their sin­cere and val­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion. And last but not least our thanks also go to our share­hold­ers and the many loyal con­sumers of our spe­cial­i­ties. Thank you very much.

In­vi­ta­tion to video con­fer­ence
To­day, Thurs­day, 21 Au­gust 2025, at 7:30am, the Del­e­gate of the Board of Di­rec­tors Monika Friedli-Walser and CFO Sacha Ger­ber will hold a Teams video con­fer­ence to dis­cuss the 2025 half-year re­sults and the other changes that have been an­nounced.

Teams video con­fer­ence in Eng­lish: Thurs­day, 21 Au­gust 2025, 7:30am (CEST)

Please con­tact us so that we can pro­vide you with the ac­cess de­tails: in­vestors@orior.ch

Down­load links
>> Half Year Re­port 2025
>> Al­ter­na­tive Per­for­mance Mea­sures Half Year 2025
>> Pre­sen­ta­tion of 2025 half-year re­sults
>> Photo gallery for the me­dia

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

In­vestor's agenda
25 March 2026: Pub­li­ca­tion of 2025 fi­nan­cial re­sults and An­nual Re­port
4 May 2026: An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing of ORIOR AG

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