Ad hoc me­dia re­leases

Af­ter ad­just­ments in 2024, ORIOR re­or­gan­ises it­self

Ad hoc an­nounce­ment pur­suant to Art. 53 LR

Zurich, 2 April 2025

• Organic growth of 0.5% (currency-adjusted); several business units achieved their best  results to date, underscoring the continued strong demand for ORIOR specialities.

• The comprehensive adjustments are within the communicated range.

• After being adjusted for one-off effects, EBITDA amounted to CHF 39.8 million (EBITDA  margin: 6.2%).

• Outlook 2025: Focus on free cash flow and improving results.

• Reorganisation of the Board of Directors.

• Monika Friedli-Walser takes over the operational responsibility of the Group as Delegate of  the Board of Directors.

• Fundamentals for the “ORIOR way forward” will be communicated in June 2025.

In the 2024 fi­nan­cial year, the ORIOR Group gen­er­ated net sales of CHF 642.1 mil­lion, just slightly be­low the pre­vi­ous year’s level (pre­vi­ous year CHF 643.1 mil­lion). Af­ter ad­just­ing for ex­change rate ef­fects, or­ganic growth of 0.5% was achieved, which re­flects the strong de­mand for ORIOR spe­cial­i­ties. Al­though some ten­ders in the re­tail sec­tor were lost due to price pres­sure and had a damp­en­ing ef­fect on sales, the ro­bust core busi­ness, in­no­va­tions and price in­creases fully off­set these ef­fects. The pos­i­tive per­for­mance in the food ser­vice chan­nel, solid growth with the out­lets at the Frank­furt and Berlin air­ports, and Culi­nor’s re­newed re­tail growth all de­serve spe­cial men­tion.

The com­pre­hen­sive ad­just­ments that were made had a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on Group prof­itabil­ity in 2024. Fur­ther­more, high pork prices could not be passed on in full, and the economies of scale did not have the de­sired ef­fect due to lower pro­duc­tion vol­umes (e.g. for plant-based prod­ucts, loss of ten­ders). EBITDA reached CHF 22.5 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 53.3 mil­lion). Ex­clud­ing spe­cial ef­fects, EBITDA amounted to CHF 39.8 mil­lion, cor­re­spond­ing to an EBITDA mar­gin of 6.2%. EBIT fell to CHF –31.9 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 26.2 mil­lion) due to the lower EBITDA, as well as the var­i­ous ad­just­ments and the im­pair­ment of the in­vest­ment in Al­bert Spiess AG. The debt ra­tio (net debt/​ad­justed EBITDA) in­creased to 4.6x due to neg­a­tive free cash flow. The eq­uity ra­tio be­fore off­set­ting of good­will was 26.2% (31 De­cem­ber 2023: 38.1%), af­ter off­set­ting of good­will it was 8.8% (31 De­cem­ber 2023: 22.5%).

ORIOR seg­ments
The ORIOR Con­ve­nience seg­ment with its Fredag, Le Pa­tron, Pastinella and Biotta com­pe­tence cen­tres, gen­er­ated –4.7% lower net sales of CHF 209.5 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 219.8 mil­lion). The main fac­tors were once again lower ex­port sales of plant-based prod­ucts and sales losses in the re­tail chan­nel. As in the pre­vi­ous year, the food ser­vice sec­tor posted very sat­is­fy­ing growth in sev­eral prod­uct groups, but was un­able to com­pen­sate the neg­a­tive ef­fects.

The ORIOR Re­fine­ment seg­ment, with the Rapelli, Al­bert Spiess and Möfag com­pe­tence cen­tres, in­creased net sales by +1.3% to CHF 248.8 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 245.7 mil­lion). In ad­di­tion to the solid core busi­ness with its strong de­mand, the main dri­vers were in­creases in sales prices and good turnover in the food ser­vice and dis­counter sec­tors.

The ORIOR In­ter­na­tional seg­ment, with the Culi­nor Food Group and Ca­su­al­food com­pe­tence cen­tres, Biot­ta’s sis­ter com­pany Gesa, and the slic­ing, pack­ag­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion plat­form Spiess Eu­rope, achieved or­ganic growth of 4.5% (in lo­cal cur­rency), cor­re­spond­ing to net sales of CHF 203.8 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 198.8 mil­lion). All of the units con­tributed to this growth, with a par­tic­u­larly strong per­for­mance from Culi­nor’s re­tail growth and Gesa’s ex­port busi­ness.

Div­i­dends
Due to the fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion, the Board of Di­rec­tors will pro­pose to the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing on 21 May 2025 that no div­i­dend be dis­trib­uted for the 2024 fi­nan­cial year.

Out­look
2025 will be a year of tran­si­tion. The loss of the vol­ume or­der in Bel­gium, the ten­der losses, and the sale of the Al­bert Spiess gas­tron­omy de­pots will have a neg­a­tive im­pact on rev­enue. Prof­itabil­ity will re­main un­der pres­sure in the first half of the year due to the ten­ders lost in 2024 and high in­put costs. The newly ac­quired or­ders in Switzer­land and in­ter­na­tion­ally will grad­u­ally con­tribute to sales and com­pen­sate for the lost ten­ders. The fo­cus in 2025 will be on im­prov­ing re­sults and free cash flow as well as strength­en­ing our de­cen­tralised struc­ture and boost­ing in­no­v­a­tive strength in our core busi­ness. The course will be ad­justed, and we will com­mu­ni­cate the fun­da­men­tals of the “ORIOR way for­ward” in June 2025.

The ORIOR Re­spon­si­bil­ity: Launch of Sus­tain­abil­ity Strat­egy 2030 and ORIOR Cli­mate Fund
The new Sus­tain­abil­ity Strat­egy 2030, which will ap­ply from 2025, was de­vel­oped in ac­cor­dance with the new le­gal re­quire­ments of the Swiss Code of Oblig­a­tions and based on the prin­ci­ple of dou­ble ma­te­ri­al­ity. The pre­vi­ous sus­tain­abil­ity strat­egy will thus have been con­cluded ear­lier than planned. The over­ar­ch­ing goal of re­al­is­ing an im­prove­ment in­dex of 80% was achieved (lin­ear progress against tar­get). The ORIOR Cli­mate Fund was launched at the be­gin­ning of 2025 as part of the new Sus­tain­abil­ity Strat­egy 2030. CO₂-Com­pen­sa­tion pay­ments pre­vi­ously made to pro­jects out­side the ORIOR Group are now be­ing fully re­placed by the fi­nanc­ing of in­ter­nal, CO₂-re­duc­tion pro­jects.

Re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Board of Di­rec­tors
The Board of Di­rec­tors is be­ing re­or­gan­ised for the next term of of­fice. Remo Brun­schwiler, Chair­man of the Board of Di­rec­tors, will not be stand­ing for re-elec­tion due to per­sonal rea­sons. The Board of Di­rec­tors would like to take this op­por­tu­nity to thank Remo Brun­schwiler for his com­mit­ment and wish him the very best in his fu­ture en­deav­ours. The Board of Di­rec­tors will pro­pose that the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing elect ORIOR Board mem­ber and en­tre­pre­neur Monika Friedli-Walser as the new Chair. In ad­di­tion, Dr. iur. San­dro Fehlmann will be pro­posed as a new mem­ber of the Board of Di­rec­tors, bring­ing le­gal ex­per­tise to the Board and fur­ther strength­en­ing it with in-depth cap­i­tal mar­ket knowl­edge. Act­ing CEO a.i. Filip De Spiegeleire will be step­ping down from op­er­a­tional man­age­ment du­ties as planned. The Board of Di­rec­tors will rec­om­mend him as a new mem­ber of the Board of Di­rec­tors in or­der to en­sure that his in­ter­na­tional ex­pe­ri­ence and know-how con­tinue to en­rich the Group. In her po­si­tion as Del­e­gate of the Board of Di­rec­tors, Monika Friedli-Walser will be re­spon­si­ble for the op­er­a­tional man­age­ment of the Group un­til fur­ther no­tice. In par­tic­u­lar, she in­tends to fur­ther strengthen the de­cen­tralised man­age­ment struc­ture.

Our thanks
Ded­i­ca­tion, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mu­tual com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing the suc­cess­ful de­vel­op­ment of ORIOR are de­ci­sive el­e­ments – and even more so when deal­ing with harsh over­all con­di­tions and a volatile en­vi­ron­ment. In this re­spect, all of our em­ploy­ees de­serve our sin­cere grat­i­tude for their val­ued con­tri­bu­tions and loy­alty. Our thanks also go to our cus­tomers and part­ners for their sin­cer­ity and trust­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with us. Fur­ther­more, we would like to thank our share­hold­ers for their trust.

In­vi­ta­tion to video con­fer­ence
CEO a.i. Filip De Spiegeleire and CFO Sacha D. Ger­ber are host­ing a Teams con­fer­ence to­day at which they will talk through the 2024 fi­nan­cial re­sults.

Teams video con­fer­ence in Ger­man/​Eng­lish: Wednes­day, 2 April 2025, 10:00 am (CEST).
Please con­tact us so that we can pro­vide you with the ac­cess de­tails.
> Mara Bach­mann, in­vestors@orior.ch, di­rect line +41 44 308 65 00.

Down­load links
>> An­nual Re­port 2024
>> Al­ter­na­tive Per­for­mance Mea­sures Full Year 2024
>> Pre­sen­ta­tion of 2024 fi­nan­cial 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
23 April 2025: Pub­li­ca­tion of the re­port on non-fi­nan­cial mat­ters for 2024
24 April 2025: Planned mail­ing of the in­vi­ta­tion to the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing
13 May 2025 (11:00 am): Share reg­is­ter closes
21 May 2025: An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing, The Hall (for­merly Sam­sung Hall), Düben­dorf
21 Au­gust 2025: Pub­li­ca­tion of 2025 Half-Year Re­sults and Half-Year Re­port

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