Ad hoc me­dia re­leases

You will find the latest media releases of the ORIOR Group hereafter. All media releases as from 1 July 2021 comply with the ad hoc publicity requirements under Article 53 of the Listing Rules.

ORIOR posts or­ganic growth;
chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment weighs on prof­itabil­ity

Ad hoc an­nounce­ment pur­suant to Art. 53 LR

Zurich, 13 March 2024

  • Net sales up by 1.0% (organic 2.1%) to CHF 643.1 million, driven by the very good performance of the International segment, and the Culinor Food Group in particular.

  • EBITDA amounted at CHF 59.2 million (previous year: 64.1 million), with an EBITDA margin of 9.2%.

  • Decrease in the debt ratio (net debt/EBITDA) from 2.06 x to 1.97 x thanks to solid free cash flow.

  • Comprehensive short-, medium- and long-term measures introduced to increase efficiency and improve profitability. 

  • ESG: on track to achieve sustainability goals. 

  • Proposed dividend of CHF 2.51 per share, continuation of an attractive dividend policy with at least a constant absolute dividend for the coming years.

  • Board of Directors: Felix Burkhard and Dr Patrick M. Müller are proposed as new members of the Board of Directors. Walter Lüthi is not standing for re-election after eight years.

  • Outlook for 2024: further organic growth and improvement of the EBITDA margin.

The in­ter­na­tion­ally ac­tive Swiss food & bev­er­age group ORIOR once again records growth for the 2023 fi­nan­cial year, al­though the chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment is weigh­ing on prof­itabil­ity. Net sales grew by 1.0% com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year to CHF 643.1 mil­lion (at con­stant ex­change rates: CHF 650.0 mil­lion). EBITDA fell to CHF 59.2 mil­lion, cor­re­spond­ing to an EBITDA mar­gin of 9.2%. CEO Daniel Lutz on the cur­rent re­sult: “We were able to re­alise or­ganic growth of 2.1% de­spite chal­leng­ing con­di­tions. This high­lights the fact that many ar­eas per­formed very well. In terms of mar­gins, how­ever, we were un­able to com­pen­sate for the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of ad­verse events. Over the past few years, we have shown that we are able to re­act with agility to con­stantly chang­ing mar­ket con­di­tions. That’s why I’m con­vinced that we’ll in­crease prof­itabil­ity again.” 

In the 2023 fi­nan­cial year, the ORIOR Group gen­er­ated net sales of CHF 643.1 mil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing an in­crease of 1.0% over the pre­vi­ous year (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 636.7 mil­lion). The net sales con­sisted of or­ganic growth of 2.1% and an ex­change rate ef­fect of –1.1%. 

The In­ter­na­tional seg­ment, par­tic­u­larly the Culi­nor Food Group and Ca­su­al­food, posted a pleas­ing per­for­mance and it was a solid year too for Rapelli and Biotta in Switzer­land. The ac­cu­mu­la­tion of ad­verse fac­tors meant that the high growth ex­pec­ta­tions of 4 to 6% and a sta­ble prof­itabil­ity trend could not be achieved. The main rea­sons for this were the on­go­ing in­fla­tion­ary en­vi­ron­ment with ris­ing in­put costs lead­ing to higher sell­ing prices, which in turn caused con­sumers to in­creas­ingly choose more af­ford­able ORIOR prod­ucts. This re­sulted in a prod­uct mix with lower mar­gins. Ad­di­tion­ally, pork prices rose sig­nif­i­cantly and cre­ated strong pres­sure on mar­gins in the fourth quar­ter. The Group’s gross mar­gin in­creased from an al­ready good 45.9% to 48.0%. Ris­ing in­put costs could be par­tially passed on in the form of higher prices. Al­though we suc­ceeded in in­creas­ing ef­fi­ciency again, this was not enough to com­pen­sate for the over­all pres­sure on prof­itabil­ity. The afore­men­tioned ef­fects then had an im­pact on EBITDA, which amounted at CHF 59.2 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 64.1 mil­lion), cor­re­spond­ing to an EBITDA mar­gin of 9.2% (pre­vi­ous year: 10.1%). 

EBIT fell to CHF 32.1 mil­lion due to the lower EBITDA and higher de­pre­ci­a­tion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 37.9 mil­lion). As a re­sult, net profit at­trib­ut­able to ORIOR AG share­hold­ers amounted to CHF 24.8 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 30.2 mil­lion). Free cash flow in­creased to CHF 35.0 mil­lion, pri­mar­ily due to lower in­vest­ment (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 18.8 mil­lion). This en­abled the debt ra­tio (net debt / EBITDA) to be fur­ther re­duced from 2.06x to 1.97x.

ORIOR seg­ments
The ORIOR Con­ve­nience seg­ment with its Fredag, Le Pa­tron, Pastinella and Biotta com­pe­tence cen­tres, gen­er­ated –0.2% lower net sales of CHF 219.8 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 220.2 mil­lion). If the vol­umes trans­ferred to the Re­fine­ment seg­ment in con­nec­tion with site de­vel­op­ment pro­jects were taken into ac­count, there would have been a slight in­crease in sales. Pastinella recorded growth com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year, with sales in the gas­tron­omy sec­tor in par­tic­u­lar show­ing a sat­is­fy­ing in­crease. Le Pa­tron also slightly sur­passed the pre­vi­ous year’s level de­spite mod­est Christ­mas sales, thanks pri­mar­ily to growth within its re­tail range. Biotta per­formed very well in Switzer­land, al­though ex­ports suf­fered from con­sumer be­hav­iour due to the strong Swiss franc and the as­so­ci­ated higher prices of its prod­ucts. Fredag fur­ther ex­panded its core poul­try busi­ness, whereas its food ser­vice chan­nel and above all the ex­port of plant-based spe­cial­i­ties to the UK did not per­form in line with ex­pec­ta­tions. 

The ORIOR Re­fine­ment seg­ment, with the Rapelli, Al­bert Spiess and Möfag com­pe­tence cen­tres, re­ported a –1.4% de­cline in net sales to CHF 245.7 mil­lion (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 249.1 mil­lion). The main fac­tors were the in­fla­tion­ary en­vi­ron­ment with ris­ing in­put costs and, as a re­sult, higher sales prices. This led to shifts in the prod­uct mix, as con­sumers in­creas­ingly switched to more af­ford­able prod­ucts. Sup­ported by the vol­umes trans­ferred from the Con­ve­nience seg­ment, Rapelli de­liv­ered a solid per­for­mance and made gains in both the re­tail and, above all, the food ser­vice sec­tor. Al­bert Spiess per­formed less sat­is­fac­to­rily. The can­cel­la­tion of a ma­jor or­der cou­pled with the lack of in­ter­com­pany sales with Spiess Eu­rope in the weak­en­ing French mar­ket re­sulted in neg­a­tive growth. Möfag again in­creased its sales. The rapid rise in pork prices in the sec­ond half of the year had a neg­a­tive ef­fect across all the com­pe­tence cen­tres. In com­bi­na­tion with the time-lim­ited bulk con­tracts at fixed prices, this put sig­nif­i­cant pres­sure on Group prof­itabil­ity. 

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 4.8% to CHF 198.8 mil­lion in the re­port­ing year (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 189.7 mil­lion). The seg­ment achieved very good or­ganic growth of 8.5% with an ex­change rate ef­fect of –3.7%. The Culi­nor Food Group recorded an ex­cep­tion­ally good per­for­mance. In ad­di­tion to con­tin­ued cus­tomer and chan­nel de­vel­op­ment, pos­i­tive dri­vers in­cluded the launch of in­no­v­a­tive prod­uct lines and the pass-through of in­creased in­put costs. Ca­su­al­food also achieved im­pres­sive growth thanks to high pas­sen­ger fre­quen­cies at all of its key lo­ca­tions, as well as its new con­cepts and out­lets at ex­ist­ing and new sites. Gesa con­tin­ued to ben­e­fit from a strong po­si­tion in its highly spe­cialised niche mar­ket and also en­joyed very grat­i­fy­ing growth. Only Spiess Eu­rope failed to im­press in the In­ter­na­tional seg­ment, los­ing a sig­nif­i­cant amount of sales com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year for the rea­sons men­tioned above.  

The ORIOR Re­spon­si­bil­ity
ORIOR is on track to achieve four out of five of its quan­ti­ta­tive tar­gets. This is good news, es­pe­cially given that all of the sus­tain­abil­ity tar­gets also have a pos­i­tive im­pact on busi­ness per­for­mance. Wa­ter con­sump­tion, green­house gases, food waste and ac­ci­dent rates were on tar­get at the end of 2023 in terms of lin­ear progress, while the sick­ness rate did not achieve the tar­geted re­duc­tion. The 2023 re­port also ad­dresses for the first time the re­quire­ments of the Swiss Code of Oblig­a­tions with re­gard to non-fi­nan­cial re­port­ing, and prepa­ra­tions to com­ply with this ex­tended over the en­tire re­port­ing year. For ex­am­ple, the dou­ble ma­te­ri­al­ity analy­sis was car­ried out, and the en­tire re­port­ing con­cept was adapted to meet the new re­quire­ments. In sum­mer 2023, ORIOR also of­fi­cially com­mit­ted it­self to sci­ence-based cli­mate tar­gets by join­ing the SBTi (Sci­ence Based Tar­get ini­tia­tive). The new base­line was then cal­cu­lated, and the short and long-term tar­gets are now be­ing de­vel­oped on this ba­sis.

Div­i­dend
The Board of Di­rec­tors will be sub­mit­ting a mo­tion to the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing on 23 May 2024 to dis­trib­ute a slightly higher or­di­nary div­i­dend of CHF 2.51 per share (pre­vi­ous year: CHF 2.50). 

Out­look

2024 fi­nan­cial year
For the cur­rent year, we ex­pect fur­ther or­ganic growth and an im­prove­ment of the EBITDA mar­gin. The en­vi­ron­ment and mar­kets are likely to re­main chal­leng­ing and the geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion tense, which means that the over­all con­di­tions for ORI­OR’s busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties are un­likely to im­prove much. In terms of sales, we nev­er­the­less ex­pect or­ganic growth to be gen­er­ated across all the seg­ments and to reach 1.5 to 2.5% (at con­stant ex­change rates). The pos­i­tive dri­vers on the topline will once again be our es­tab­lished core prod­uct ranges and in­no­va­tions, broad di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion – on the cus­tomer, chan­nel and prod­uct side – and fur­ther cost pass-throughs. The In­ter­na­tional seg­ment is fore­cast to again make the strongest con­tri­bu­tion to the Group’s or­ganic growth. Ad­di­tional fo­cal points are im­prov­ing prof­itabil­ity and in­creas­ing ef­fi­ciency, to which com­pre­hen­sive mea­sures have al­ready been ini­ti­ated, as well as the im­ple­men­ta­tion of fur­ther site de­vel­op­ment pro­jects. Given the con­text of the chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment, we an­tic­i­pate a grad­ual im­prove­ment in the EBITDA mar­gin of 9.3 to 9.5% in the 2024 fi­nan­cial year. 

ORIOR 2025 Strat­egy am­bi­tions
The am­bi­tions for or­ganic growth (2 to 4% p.a. on av­er­age), the eq­uity ra­tio (>25%), the debt ra­tio (<2.5x), and the im­prove­ment in­dex for sus­tain­abil­ity tar­gets (>80%) re­main the same. We are also main­tain­ing the am­bi­tion of a >10% EBITDA mar­gin. In view of the an­tic­i­pated on­go­ing chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment, a re­cov­ery to the tar­geted level could take 2 to 3 years. The am­bi­tion of in­creas­ing ab­solute EBITDA an­nu­ally can no longer be re­alised ow­ing to the 2023 re­sult. The Board of Di­rec­tors en­vis­ages at least an un­changed ab­solute div­i­dend in the com­ing years. 

Mea­sures for sta­bil­is­ing and in­creas­ing prof­itabil­ity and ef­fi­ciency
All of the ORIOR Group’s Swiss com­pe­tence cen­tres have been in­volved in a com­pre­hen­sive busi­ness and prod­uct port­fo­lio analy­sis to more con­sis­tently pro­mote and po­si­tion in­no­va­tions as well as high-mar­gin prod­uct ranges on the mar­ket. Op­ti­mi­sa­tion po­ten­tial on the cost side will con­tinue to be sys­tem­at­i­cally lever­aged. Based on the cur­rent start­ing po­si­tion and the ad­just­ments to the port­fo­lio, the struc­tures in in­di­vid­ual com­pe­tence cen­tres are also be­ing re­assessed and adapted.  

Given the on­go­ing chal­leng­ing con­di­tions, the Board of Di­rec­tors and Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee have de­cided to ini­ti­ate the new five-year plan. ORIOR site de­vel­op­ment plays a cen­tral role in this by help­ing to in­crease prof­itabil­ity and im­prove ef­fi­ciency. With this goal in mind, ORIOR has ac­quired an neigh­bour­ing build­ing with ad­di­tional land at its strate­gi­cally im­por­tant site in Ober­ent­felden. The in­ten­tion is to in­vest in this site, and plan­ning is cur­rently un­der­way. Ad­di­tional in­for­ma­tion on the pro­ject will be com­mu­ni­cated as soon as it has been fi­nalised. 

Changes to the Board of Di­rec­tors    
Wal­ter Lüthi, a long-stand­ing mem­ber of the Board of Di­rec­tors, will not be stand­ing for re-elec­tion at the up­com­ing An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing on 23 May 2024. We are very grate­ful to Mr Lüthi for the way in which he has sup­ported and helped to shape the ORIOR Group over the past eight years. 

At the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing on 23 May 2024, the Board of Di­rec­tors of ORIOR AG will pro­pose that Fe­lix Burkhard and Dr Patrick M. Müller be elected as new mem­bers of the Board of Di­rec­tors. Fe­lix Burkhard (born in 1966) is CFO and mem­ber of the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the Galenica Group, Bern. The proven fi­nan­cial ex­pert has many years of man­age­ment ex­pe­ri­ence in var­i­ous po­si­tions at the Galenica Group, which is highly spe­cialised in the health­care mar­ket. Among his other re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, he was in charge of the group’s re­tail busi­ness for sev­eral years, in­clud­ing Amavita, Sun Store and the Coop Vi­tal­ity joint ven­ture. Dr Patrick M. Müller (born 1980) un­til re­cently headed the British home de­liv­ery com­pany Milk & More as CEO. He pos­sesses in-depth knowl­edge of the Eu­ro­pean food mar­ket and is char­ac­terised by his many years of suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neur­ship. He pre­vi­ously held a va­ri­ety of man­age­ment po­si­tions in the UK, East­ern Eu­rope and Lux­em­bourg with the Theo Müller Group. 

The in­vi­ta­tion to the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing will in­clude a pre­sen­ta­tion of both can­di­dates along with a brief CV and their most im­por­tant qual­i­fi­ca­tions and skills. 

Changes to the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee    
An­dreas Lind­ner, CFO of the ORIOR Group, has in­formed the Board of Di­rec­tors and the Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee that he in­tends to step down from his po­si­tion at the be­gin­ning of 2025 in or­der to pur­sue pri­vate /sport­ing com­mit­ments and to con­cen­trate more on board of di­rec­tors’ ac­tiv­i­ties in the fu­ture. ORIOR very much re­grets his de­ci­sion and would like to take this op­por­tu­nity to thank him for his valu­able con­tri­bu­tion. The search for a suit­able re­place­ment can­di­date is un­der­way. An an­nounce­ment will be made as soon as a suc­ces­sor to Mr Lind­ner has been ap­pointed.

Our thanks
Ded­i­ca­tion, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mu­tual com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing the suc­cess­ful de­vel­op­ment of ORIOR are de­ci­sive el­e­ments for our suc­cess – 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. We also thank our cus­tomers and part­ners for their sin­cere and trust­ing co­op­er­a­tion. Like­wise we would like to thank our share­hold­ers for their trust in us and our work. 

In­vi­ta­tion to video con­fer­ence
To­day, Wednes­day 13 March 2024, CEO Daniel Lutz and CFO An­dreas Lind­ner will take us through the 2023 fi­nan­cial re­sults in a Teams video con­fer­ence.

Tele­phone con­fer­ence in Eng­lish: Wednes­day, 13 March 2024, 3:00 pm (CET)
> Join via Teams: >> Click here to par­tic­i­pate in the con­fer­ence <<  
> Par­tic­i­pa­tion by tele­phone: +41 43 216 97 36, con­fer­ence ID: 836 628 15#

Tele­phone con­fer­ence in Ger­man: Wednes­day, 13 March 2024, 10:00 am (CET)
> Join via Teams: >> Click here to par­tic­i­pate in the con­fer­ence <<  
> Par­tic­i­pa­tion by tele­phone: +41 43 216 97 36, con­fer­ence ID: 377 242 615#

If you have any or­gan­i­sa­tional ques­tions about the video con­fer­ence or prob­lems with the link, please con­tact: Mara Bach­mann, mara.bach­mann@orior.ch, di­rect line +41 44 308 65 02.

Down­load links:
>> An­nual Re­port 2023
>> Al­ter­na­tive Per­for­mance Mea­sures Full Year 2023
>> Pre­sen­ta­tion on Full Year re­sults 2023
>> Me­dia im­age gallery

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

In­vestor agenda
23 April 2024: Pub­li­ca­tion of Sus­tain­abil­ity Re­port 2023
29 April 2024: Planned mail­ing of the in­vi­ta­tion to the An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing
16 May 2024: Share reg­is­ter closes
23 May 2024: An­nual Gen­eral Meet­ing
27 May 2024: Ex date
29 May 2024: Pay date
21 Au­gust 2024: Pub­li­ca­tion of 2024 Half-Year Re­sults and Half-Year Re­port


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