Ad hoc me­dia re­leases

ORIOR an­nounces key fig­ures for the 2024 fi­nan­cial year; core busi­ness in ro­bust shape

Ad hoc an­nounce­ment pur­suant to Art. 53 LR

Zurich, 5 March 2025

• Organic growth of 0.5% confirms good demand for ORIOR specialities; several business units post their best-ever results.

• The value adjustments announced in December – largely relating to non-operational areas – are within the predicted range.

• Suitable measures have been introduced to address the inventory discrepancy identified in February 2025.

• The EBITDA margin adjusted for one-off effects is expected to come in at between 6.0% and 6.5%.

• Due to the financial situation, the Board of Directors will propose waiving the 2024 dividend for this year.

• The outlook for almost all units is robust, and various positive factors for 2025 have been confirmed: two major European tenders for airport outlets and a cross-border food service order have been won, and a key contract has been extended in the Convenience segment. 

• Despite lower sales, the adjusted EBITDA margin for 2025 is expected to remain stable at around the 2024 level.

State­ment on the ad­just­ments and the mea­sures adopted
As part of an ex­ten­sive re­view of the en­tire Group, a dis­crep­ancy in the val­u­a­tion of in­ven­tory at Al­bert Spiess AG was iden­ti­fied. Full de­tails, in­clud­ing the ori­gin of and re­spon­si­bil­ity for this, are be­ing analysed. Cor­rec­tive mea­sures were taken im­me­di­ately, aimed in par­tic­u­lar at re­duc­ing knock-on ef­fects. Of the to­tal of around CHF 10 mil­lion (af­fect­ing EBITDA but not cash), CHF 2–4 mil­lion re­lates to the prior-year pe­riod, re­sult­ing a re­state­ment of fig­ures for the 2023 fi­nan­cial year. Based on the new cir­cum­stances, an im­pair­ment of  CHF 10–12 mil­lion is ex­pected at Al­bert Spiess AG (af­fect­ing nei­ther cash nor EBITDA).   

In its strate­gic de­lib­er­a­tions, Al­bert Spiess AG de­cided to fo­cus in the fu­ture on its core busi­ness of pro­duc­ing Graubün­den dried meat spe­cial­i­ties. In this con­text, a new home has been found for its gas­tron­omy de­pots in Landquart and Davos: Mérat AG is ac­quir­ing both these de­pots from Al­bert Spiess with ef­fect from 1 April 2025, along with the cor­re­spond­ing busi­ness and all 15 em­ploy­ees.

In ad­di­tion, around CHF 8 mil­lion of the ad­just­ments pre­vi­ously com­mu­ni­cated in De­cem­ber 2024 in con­nec­tion with the dis­con­tin­ued plant de­vel­op­ment pro­ject (CHF 20–22 mil­lion) is be­ing re­clas­si­fied with an im­pact on EBITDA (non-cash). CHF 2–4 mil­lion of this re­lates to the 2023 fi­nan­cial year, and CHF 4–6 mil­lion to the 2024 fi­nan­cial year. A sales process has also been ini­ti­ated for the an­nex build­ing at the Ober­ent­felden site, which is not used for op­er­a­tional pur­poses. 

With re­gard to the ter­mi­na­tion of a large-vol­ume con­tract with a for­eign cus­tomer in Bel­gium, a mu­tual and more con­sid­er­ate in­terim so­lu­tion has now been agreed with the cus­tomer for part of the vol­ume. The re­duc­tion will take place in sev­eral stages, spread across the next three years, al­low­ing time for the early ac­qui­si­tion of new cus­tomers. In or­der to ab­sorb the ef­fect of the first tranche of the re­duc­tion, ex­pected at the end of 2025, the clo­sure of the small plant in Olen, Bel­gium is to go ahead. The pro­vi­sions for the sev­er­ance plan and other costs as­so­ci­ated with the re­struc­tur­ing and vol­ume shifts in Bel­gium are within the com­mu­ni­cated range.

Pro­vi­sional, unau­dited key fig­ures for the 2024 fi­nan­cial year
Thanks to strong Christ­mas trade, ORIOR is likely to post (cur­rency-ad­justed) or­ganic growth of 0.5% for the 2024 fi­nan­cial year, which is slightly higher than ex­pected (pre­vi­ous guid­ance was just be­low the year-ear­lier level). To­gether with the fact that some units achieved their best re­sults to date, this un­der­scores that the ma­jor­ity of busi­ness units en­joyed a good fi­nan­cial year in the pre­vail­ing en­vi­ron­ment and con­firms over­all sta­ble de­mand for ORI­OR’s spe­cial­i­ties.

As a re­sult of the ad­di­tional ad­just­ments, the EBITDA mar­gin will be be­tween 3.2% and 3.7% (pre­vi­ously 5.0% to 5.3%). The ad­justed EBITDA mar­gin, ex­clud­ing one-off ef­fects, is an­tic­i­pated to come in at be­tween 6.0% and 6.5% (pre­vi­ously 8.0% to 8.3%).

In light of the re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion of some plant de­vel­op­ment costs, in­vest­ment spend­ing in 2024 is now ex­pected to be CHF 37–39 mil­lion (pre­vi­ously CHF 41–43 mil­lion). Net debt as at 31 De­cem­ber 2024 is ex­pected to stand at around CHF 182 mil­lion.

In view of the fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion and in or­der to sup­port the mea­sures taken, the Board of Di­rec­tors will pro­pose to the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing that no div­i­dend be paid in re­spect of the 2024 fi­nan­cial year.

In­sights into cur­rent busi­ness
The core busi­ness re­mains ro­bust, and var­i­ous pos­i­tive fac­tors for the fu­ture have been con­firmed. For in­stance, Ca­su­al­food’s var­ied and in­no­v­a­tive con­cepts helped to win two ma­jor Eu­ro­pean ten­ders for a to­tal of nine new out­lets at two air­ports, with an av­er­age term of eight years. The first out­lets are likely to start op­er­at­ing at the start of 2026. Culi­nor se­cured a cross-bor­der food ser­vice con­tract, while Fredag con­firmed a large bulk or­der in the food ser­vice busi­ness, thus se­cur­ing an im­por­tant pil­lar to sales in the Con­ve­nience seg­ment for the com­ing years.

Nev­er­the­less, sales will be dragged down by var­i­ous non-re­cur­ring ef­fects in 2025. These in­clude the ter­mi­na­tion of the first part of Culi­nor’s bulk or­der, the non-re­cur­rence of sales from the two Al­bert Spiess de­pots and the ef­fects of ten­ders be­ing lost in 2024. All in all, it will not be pos­si­ble to make up for the whole of the one off ef­fects. We ex­pect sales to be down by a mid-sin­gle-digit per­cent­age.

De­spite the ex­pec­ta­tion of lower sales in 2025, we cur­rently an­tic­i­pate a sta­ble EBITDA mar­gin (ver­sus the ex­pected ad­justed EBITDA mar­gin for 2024).

In­vi­ta­tion to the in­vestor con­fer­ence (dig­i­tal at­ten­dance pos­si­ble if de­sired)
In­terim CEO Filip De Spiegeleire and CFO Sacha Ger­ber are host­ing an in­vestor con­fer­ence to­day, Wednes­day 5 March 2025 at 10:00am, at which they will talk through the com­mu­ni­cated key fig­ures. The con­fer­ence will take place close to Zurich’s main rail­way sta­tion; at­ten­dance via Teams is also pos­si­ble by re­quest.

Please con­tact us to reg­is­ter and so that we can pro­vide you with the de­tails.
> Mara Bach­mann, mara.bach­mann@orior.ch, di­rect line +41 44 308 65 02.

Down­load links
>> Pre­sen­ta­tion of key fig­ures for 2024, state­ment on the ad­just­ments and in­sights into the cur­rent year
>> Photo gallery for the me­dia

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

In­vestor's agenda
2 April 2025: Pub­li­ca­tion of 2024 fi­nan­cial re­sults and An­nual Re­port
23 April 2025: Pub­li­ca­tion of non-fi­nan­cial re­port­ing for 2024
24 April 2025: Mail­ing of the in­vi­ta­tion to the 2025 An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing
21 May 2025: An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing of ORIOR AG

Archive me­dia re­leases: