Ad hoc me­dia re­leases

ORIOR grows with its in­ter­na­tional busi­ness;
re­sults in line with ex­pec­ta­tions

Ad hoc an­nounce­ment pur­suant to Art. 53 LR

Zurich, 21 Au­gust 2024

• Increase in net sales of 0.6% (organic 1.4%) to CHF 314.0 million, driven by good growth in the International segment and positive development in the Refinement segment.

• EBITDA margin at 8.5% as expected (EBITDA margin H1 2023: 9.8%).

• Wide-ranging measures to improve profitability and increase efficiency are beginning to take effect.

• Outlook: significant improvement in profitability with moderate organic growth – decision to streamline the portfolio leads to minor guidance adjustments. 

• ESG: sixth ORIOR Sustainability Report published. 

• Executive Committee: Sacha D. Gerber named new CFO of the ORIOR Group.

• Investors’ Event with the presentation of the ORIOR 2030 Strategy: 3 December 2024 in Zurich.

The in­ter­na­tion­ally ac­tive Swiss food & bev­er­age group ORIOR has achieved growth in a chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment. The EBITDA mar­gin re­mained un­der pres­sure, due to ex­ter­nal in­flu­ences and the shift in the prod­uct mix. “The re­sults are in line with our ex­pec­ta­tions. We are very pleased with the per­for­mance of the In­ter­na­tional seg­ment. Given the over­all con­di­tions, a con­sid­er­able share of the Swiss busi­ness also did well,” com­mented Daniel Lutz, CEO of the ORIOR Group.

Net sales in the first half of 2024 in­creased by 0.6% over the pre­vi­ous year to CHF 314.0 mil­lion (H1 2023: CHF 312.1 mil­lion). Or­ganic growth reached 1.4%, while the ex­change rate ef­fect was –0.8%. In par­tic­u­lar, the In­ter­na­tional seg­ment, con­sist­ing of the Culi­nor, Ca­su­al­food, Gesa and Spiess Eu­rope com­pa­nies, once again posted very good growth of +5% (in CHF), while the Re­fine­ment seg­ment, at +1.6%, also had a pos­i­tive im­pact on growth. The Con­ve­nience seg­ment was un­able to ful­fil ex­pec­ta­tions and recorded a de­cline of –4.6%. The Group’s gross mar­gin was 47.9%, 96 ba­sis points be­low the same pe­riod of the pre­vi­ous year.

EBITDA reached CHF 26.6 mil­lion (H1 2023: CHF 30.5 mil­lion), cor­re­spond­ing to an EBITDA mar­gin of 8.5% (H1 2023: 9.8%). As an­tic­i­pated, it was not yet pos­si­ble to fully off­set the pres­sure on prof­itabil­ity in the first half of 2024. The rapid rise in pork prices in au­tumn 2023 and their con­tin­ued high lev­els, to­gether with high per­son­nel costs and shifts in the prod­uct and chan­nel mix, had a neg­a­tive im­pact on prof­itabil­ity. The main dri­ver of the high per­son­nel costs was the planned in­crease in staff num­bers at Ca­su­al­food in or­der to cover the busy sum­mer months. As a re­sult, EBIT fell to CHF 12.8 mil­lion (H1 2023: CHF 16.8 mil­lion), cor­re­spond­ing to an EBIT mar­gin of 4.1% (H1 2023: 5.4%). Net profit was CHF 9.4 mil­lion (H1 2023: CHF 12.9 mil­lion).

Cash flow from op­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties amounted to CHF 15.7 mil­lion due to the lower con­sol­i­dated net profit (H1 2023: CHF 18.8 mil­lion). Cash flow from in­vest­ment ac­tiv­i­ties to­talled CHF –29.0 mil­lion (H1 2023: CHF –9.9 mil­lion), due to the pur­chase of an ad­ja­cent build­ing with ad­di­tional land at the strate­gi­cally im­por­tant Ober­ent­felden site. The debt ra­tio in­creased to 2.7x and was there­fore above ORI­OR’s tar­get level of <2.5x as at the re­port­ing date. The eq­uity ra­tio af­ter good­will off­set­ting amounted to 21.1% (31 De­cem­ber 2023: 23.5%).

ORIOR seg­ments
ORI­OR’s Con­ve­nience seg­ment, with its Fredag, Le Pa­tron, Pastinella and Biotta com­pe­tence cen­tres, gen­er­ated net sales of CHF 104.7 mil­lion, (H1 2023: CHF 109.8 mil­lion), cor­re­spond­ing to a de­cline of –4.6%. The lack of ex­port sales of plant-based prod­ucts had a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact in this area. Ad­di­tion­ally, the tra­di­tional re­tail chan­nel was un­able to match the pre­vi­ous year’s level. On the other hand, the food ser­vice chan­nel posted pos­i­tive growth. In par­tic­u­lar thanks to cus­tomised so­lu­tions for food ser­vice com­pa­nies and es­tab­lished prod­uct ranges from Fredag and Le Pa­tron as well as fresh Biotta juices and smooth­ies. The per­for­mance of the pasta range for the gas­tron­omy sec­tor and the suc­cess­ful ex­pan­sion of the al-dente pasta range in the re­tail chan­nel were also pleas­ing.

The ORIOR Re­fine­ment seg­ment, with the Rapelli, Al­bert Spiess and Möfag com­pe­tence cen­tres, in­creased net sales by +1.6% to CHF 121.3 mil­lion (H1 2023: CHF 119.3 mil­lion). The sales per­for­mance of the re­tail chan­nel was a pos­i­tive high­light thanks to ris­ing sales of cooked and smoked spe­cial­i­ties as well as cost pass-throughs. The food ser­vice chan­nel was not quite able to reach the pre­vi­ous year’s level, due in large part to a down­turn in sales of grill spe­cial­i­ties from Rapelli as a re­sult of poor weather. 

The ORIOR In­ter­na­tional seg­ment, com­pris­ing the Culi­nor 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 +5% to CHF 98.9 mil­lion com­pared with the same pe­riod in the pre­vi­ous year (H1 2023: CHF 94.2 mil­lion). Or­ganic growth was a very good 7.6%, while the ex­change rate ef­fect was –2.6%. The main dri­ver was Culi­nor’s con­tin­ued sat­is­fy­ing growth in re­tail and food ser­vice, dri­ven es­pe­cially by new launches of in­no­v­a­tive prod­uct lines. Ca­su­al­food’s sales per­for­mance was also im­pres­sive, thanks to ris­ing pas­sen­ger num­bers, the open­ing of new out­lets, and cost pass-throughs. Gesa once again suc­ceeded in sur­pass­ing its al­ready high sales level, and Spiess Eu­rope also recorded in­creased sales.

The ORIOR Re­spon­si­bil­ity
The sixth Sus­tain­abil­ity Re­port was pub­lished in ac­cor­dance with the GRI (Global Re­port­ing Ini­tia­tive) and in com­pli­ance with the le­gal re­quire­ments re­lat­ing to due dili­gence and non-fi­nan­cial re­port­ing and was ap­proved by the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing with a very high ac­cep­tance rate. This is the first con­sol­i­dated Sus­tain­abil­ity Re­port that ORIOR has pub­lished for the en­tire Group. The cur­rent Sus­tain­abil­ity Strat­egy cov­ers ORI­OR’s Swiss com­pe­tence cen­tres and runs un­til 2025. Work on the Sus­tain­abil­ity Strat­egy 2030 was started early in or­der to widen our sus­tain­abil­ity am­bi­tions to en­com­pass the en­tire Group and to in­clude the new, manda­tory re­quire­ments such as the dou­ble ma­te­ri­al­ity analy­sis.

Out­look
In the sec­ond half of the year, we ex­pect prof­itabil­ity to im­prove sig­nif­i­cantly com­pared with the first half and con­tin­ued mod­er­ate or­ganic growth. We an­tic­i­pate the In­ter­na­tional seg­ment will once again per­form well, and the Con­ve­nience seg­ment is also fore­cast to ex­pe­ri­ence mod­est growth. The Re­fine­ment seg­ment is un­likely to reach the pre­vi­ous year’s level in H2. The ex­pected mix shift, the sea­son­ally stronger H2, and the ef­fi­ciency en­hance­ment mea­sures we have in­tro­duced (in­clud­ing struc­tural ad­just­ments and cost re­duc­tions) will have a pos­i­tive im­pact on prof­itabil­ity. The ini­tial ad­just­ments im­ple­mented as a re­sult of the com­pre­hen­sive prod­uct port­fo­lio analy­sis will lead to slightly lower sales, but also to im­proved prof­itabil­ity in the medium term. Based on this, guid­ance for the cur­rent year has been re­vised slightly down­wards to or­ganic sales growth of 0.5–1.5% (pre­vi­ously: 1.5–2.5%) and an EBITDA mar­gin of 9.0–9.3% (pre­vi­ously: 9.3–9.5%).

ORIOR 2030 Strat­egy    
In view of the chang­ing over­all con­di­tions, the five-year plan­ning was ini­ti­ated ahead of time in spring 2024. This in­cludes an in-depth re­vi­sion of the busi­ness and prod­uct port­fo­lio and the five strate­gic pil­lars as well as the am­bi­tions de­fined within it. An up­date on ORI­OR’s site de­vel­op­ment is also part of this, with the aim of boost­ing prof­itabil­ity. The site de­vel­op­ment pro­jects are planned in such a way that the com­mu­ni­cated tar­get fig­ures – debt ra­tio of <2.5x; short-term over­runs up to an up­per limit of max. 3.0x – can be met. The div­i­dend strat­egy with at least a con­stant ab­solute div­i­dend per share will be main­tained. 

>>> The ORIOR 2030 Strat­egy in­clud­ing site de­vel­op­ment will be pre­sented in Zurich on 3 De­cem­ber 2024. 

Changes to the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee: Sacha D. Ger­ber to be­come new CFO of the ORIOR Group   
An­dreas Lind­ner, CFO of the ORIOR Group, will be leav­ing the Com­pany at the be­gin­ning of 2025 as pre­vi­ously an­nounced. The Board of Di­rec­tors has ap­pointed Sacha D. Ger­ber as CFO and mem­ber of the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of ORIOR AG. Sacha D. Ger­ber pos­sesses many years of ex­pe­ri­ence as a CFO in var­i­ous in­dus­trial and food com­pa­nies (Swatch Group, Hero, Cal­ida Group, and Emmi Group). Ger­ber will join the Com­pany on 1 No­vem­ber 2024, and will as­sume re­spon­si­bil­ity as CFO of the ORIOR Group as of 1 Jan­u­ary 2025. The cur­rent CFO An­dreas Lind­ner will sup­port ORIOR with the an­nual fi­nan­cial re­sults and exit the Com­pany on 31 Jan­u­ary 2025. We would al­ready like to ex­tend our sin­cere thanks to him for his tire­less ef­forts and valu­able con­tri­bu­tions to ORIOR.

Our thanks
We are very grate­ful to the em­ploy­ees of the ORIOR Group, who work hard every day dis­play­ing tremen­dous ded­i­ca­tion and true iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the Group’s de­vel­op­ment. We would also like to thank our cus­tomers and busi­ness part­ners for their ex­cel­lent and re­li­able col­lab­o­ra­tion – solid part­ner­ships are very im­por­tant, es­pe­cially now when the en­vi­ron­ment is chal­leng­ing for every­one. Our sin­cere thanks also go to our share­hold­ers and con­sumers for the trust and loy­alty they have shown to us.

In­vi­ta­tion to video con­fer­ence
To­day, Wednes­day 21 Au­gust 2024, CEO Daniel Lutz and CFO An­dreas Lind­ner will take us through the 2024 half-year re­sults in a Teams video con­fer­ence.

Teams video con­fer­ence in Eng­lish: Wednes­day, 21 Au­gust 2024, 3:00 pm (CEST)
Teams video con­fer­ence in Ger­man: Wednes­day, 21 Au­gust 2024, 10:00 am (CEST)

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.

Down­load-Links
>> Half Year Re­port 2024
>> Al­ter­na­tive Per­for­mance Mea­sures Half Year 2024
>> Pre­sen­ta­tion of 2024 half-year re­sults
>> GRI Sus­tain­abil­ity Re­port 2023
>> 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 agenda
3 De­cem­ber 2024: In­vestors’ Event, pre­sen­ta­tion of the ORIOR 2030 Strat­egy, Zurich
5 March 2025: Pub­li­ca­tion of 2024 fi­nan­cial re­sults and An­nual Re­port
21 May 2025: An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing of ORIOR AG

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