Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our full year 2024 earnings call on this, yeah, sunny spring day, at least in the northeast, northwest of Germany. Here with me today are the two members of our Executive Board, Oliver Schwegmann, CEO, and Ralf Brühöfner, CFO. Good morning, Oliver. Good morning, Ralf. If you have any questions, you can submit them by using the chat window. At the end of the presentation, I will begin to read them out anonymously. I would now like to hand over directly to Oliver and Ralf.
Good afternoon, or good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Oliver Schwegmann, the CEO of the Berentzen-Gruppe speaking. Together with my colleague and CFO, Ralf Brühöfner, we, as the executive board of the Berentzen-Gruppe, would like to welcome all of you to our full year 2024 results video call. Also, I would like to welcome our colleague and Director of Investor Relations, Thorsten Schmitt, who has already given the introduction to this session. After our presentation, Thorsten will collect your questions, which Ralf and I will answer as thoroughly as possible to meet your expectations. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, the Berentzen-Gruppe, with a heritage spanning over 260 years, is dedicated to enriching people's lives through a wide variety of beverages, from freshly pressed juice to start the morning, to refreshing lemonades during the day, and spirits that bring people together for special moments.
Berentzen offers beverages for every occasion, from morning to evening. Our mission is to combine the strength of tradition with the spirit of innovation. For us, it's not just about beverages, but about the moments and memories they help to create. Now let us take a look at the key facts about our group. One important change that should be highlighted is that the Berentzen-Gruppe now operates six company locations after the sale of the Grüneberg production site in the past financial year. As a result, the number of employees has decreased to 430. All other facts are surely known to most of you. For this reason, I would like to move straight on to the highlights of the past financial year 2024. Here you can see an overview of the financial highlights of our 2024 financial year. The Berentzen-Gruppe generated consolidated revenues of EUR 181.9 million.
This is slightly below the previous year's figures. The background to this development is, on the one hand side, the overall decline in sales volume due to the ongoing challenging situation and in an overall declining market. Consumers remain unsettled by inflation and the general economic crisis, which is reflected in the significant reluctance to consume. In addition, we had difficult price negotiations with some important retail partners, especially in the first quarter of the 2024 financial year, which is why several high-revenue promotional activities were not implemented, mostly throughout the first half of the year. Furthermore, the sale of the Grüneberg site, along with the regional brands of mineral water and soft drinks associated with it, which I just mentioned, contributed significantly to a decline in revenues.
In the view of such a challenging market environment, we are particularly pleased to report such a strong development of our key performance indicators. Consolidated EBITDA increased by 20.7% compared to the previous year. Even more remarkable is the 37.0% increase in consolidated EBIT. This represents the highest consolidated EBIT in many years, an important milestone for the Berentzen-Gruppe that we can be proud of. These outstanding results are primarily due to a significant improvement in the Group's gross profits, as you can see on the upper right side. Regaining our gross profit strength was a key objective, especially after the massive cost increases resulting from the war in Ukraine. In addition to the dynamic progress and the strategic core topics, noticeable improvements in product margins, in particular, have contributed to our success.
As you can see, the overall gross profit margin grew by an impressive 300 basis points compared to 2023. As our current growth is nearly stable, the increase in gross profit is directly reflected in EBIT. Let us now have a look at the development in the individual segments. Revenues in the spirit segments of the Berentzen-Gruppe declined slightly by minus 2.8%, which is mainly due to declines in various categories' revenues. However, despite this overall development, our strategic focus brand, Berentzen, as well as certain product groups and markets, were able to generate encouraging growth impulses. Our strategic focus brand, Berentzen, recorded an increase in revenues of plus 8.3% compared to the previous year, which confirms the strength and attractiveness of this brand in the market. As a key driver behind this development was the very successful launch of our new innovation, Berentzen Smoothie Shots.
We also saw a positive development in the premium and medium segment of our private label brands, with an increase of +1.7%. This underlines an increased consumer demand for high-quality products at a reasonable price, especially in times of inflation and uncertainty. In addition, our export business improved slightly. These results emphasize the effectiveness of our strategic measures and our focus on high margin and high-quality products. They clearly show the importance of our strong brands and quality assurance. At the same time, these positive developments are an incentive to continue intensifying our efforts in these focus areas. Like never before, we need a high focus on our strategic core pillars, especially in times when overall market environment conditions are no tailwind but headwind for our business. The non-alcoholic beverage segments recorded a decline in revenues of -5.5% in the 2024 financial year.
This decline is mainly due to the sale of our Grüneberg site and the associated mineral water and soft drink brands last year. As already announced at the end of the first half of 2024, the sale had a one-time negative impact on earnings but was largely liquidity neutral. I will come back to this in a minute. On a positive note, however, our strategic focus brand, Mio Mio, bucked the general trend to achieve growth of +1.7% or EUR 0.4 million. After the strong growth rates of recent years, we could not be satisfied with this only slight increase. I need to point out that especially Mio Mio faced some serious conflicts with some retail customers due to significant price increases we had to pass on to our clients.
Low-carb negotiations even led to a crash situation with one of our major Mio Mio clients in Germany, which still by today is not fixed yet. I can assure you that we are still working hard to get it fixed soon, even if we have to stay consequent. However, we are conducting a wide range of projects and initiatives in 2025 to bring Mio Mio back on the former growth path again. I'll give you a deeper view into our measures a little bit later in my presentation. Now I would like to give you a quick overview of the sale of the Grüneberg production site, highlighting the financial impact and the strategic advantages that this decision has brought to us. First of all, as mentioned before, the sale led to a decline in consolidated revenues of minus EUR 1.3 million in the 2024 financial year.
For the upcoming years, we expect an impact of minus EUR 8 million to minus EUR 10 million on the consolidated revenues per year. This may seem negative at first glance, but it is offset by a significant improvement in the long-term economic situation of the Group. For 2024, we have also an extraordinary effect, which will be explained by Ralf later in this presentation. Looking at the long-term effects, we expect the sale to have a positive impact on consolidated EBIT of up to EUR 1 million per year from 2026 onwards. In addition, the sale will enable us to make significant savings in CapEx, which will amount to over EUR 12 million over the next three years. That will have a huge positive impact on our liquidity.
This sale not only provided us with financial relief, but also with a further contract bottling agreement for our strategic focus brand, Mio Mio. This continues to ensure optimal supply and availability of Mio Mio in the eastern part of Germany. Let's go back to our individual segments. Here you can see that revenues in our fresh food systems segment saw a slight positive development in 2024, increasing by 2.5% year on year to EUR 20.1 million in total. This development is largely due to our fruit juicers, which achieved strong revenue growth of plus 11.9% or EUR 0.6 million. The introduction of the new Citrocasa XT product in the past financial year is particularly noteworthy. This model offers a high degree of user-friendliness and versatility. We have also reorganized the sales team and worked closely with sales partners, which has significantly improved business.
This positive development generally shows that the global trend towards natural and healthy food continues unabated. Now I would like to pass on to my colleague Ralf Brühöfner, who will give you more insights about the Group's financial performance.
Thank you, Oliver. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, also from my side. Oliver has just explained the operational results for 2024. Let us now take a look on the items from EBIT to consolidated profit, which was negative by EUR 1.3 million in 2024. Exceptional effects and high interest expenses are the main reasons for lower consolidated net profit despite a much better EBIT. The IAS 29 high inflation effect for our Turkish business is basically known from previous years. Compared to 2023, the amount is nearly stable, with an only small increase of EUR 0.1 million, mainly due to improved business activities in Turkey and an ongoing high inflation. The sale of our Grüneberg production site has a negative one-off effect on the net profit of EUR 4.8 million. For this matter, we had already recognized expenses of EUR 4.6 million in the first half of 2024.
In an ad hoc disclosure dated August 1, 2024, we finally estimated the total amount at EUR 4.9 million for the full year. With EUR 4.8 million, we have therefore remained within this expected range. The composition of the amount is as follows. Firstly, we had to consider the impairment loss with total EUR 2.8 million. These costs are completely non-cash. Secondly, the transaction costs amount to EUR 1.8 million, mainly consisting of consultancy costs and maintenance obligations. At this point, I would like to emphasize once again that the positive effects of this transaction far outweigh the negative ones in terms of liquidity and earnings. Moreover, considering the EUR 2.1 million cash in from the sale of long-term assets to the buyer, the transaction was approximately cash neutral.
The increase in the financial results from EUR 4 million- EUR 5.6 million is mainly driven by the extended financing needs and high interest costs and our growing and successful Turkish business. The financing costs at our business activities, however, remained stable, although the average three-month EURIBOR rose the second year in a row. With the beginning of the second last quarter 2024 and up to now, the EURIBOR came down and has recently further fallen, which will have a favorable effect on the financing costs 2025. This is important to know as the three-month EURIBOR is our base interest rate for our very main part of financial debt. Now, please take a look at our balance sheet. The balance sheet total is EUR 136.8 million and therefore lower than in the previous year.
The main drivers behind this are effects of the assets sold in the Grüneberg deal on the one hand and the lower inventories due to a restrictive working capital management on the other hand. Despite a slightly lower equity, the equity ratio rose from 32.6% to approximately 34%, mainly due to a significantly reduced balance sheet total. The equity ratio is consistently solid, meaning that one-third of the assets are financed by equity items. In addition to that, the total of equity plus non-current liabilities is approximately EUR 66 million, exceeding the non-current assets value of EUR 56 million by approximately EUR 12 million. Considering the matching maturities, the Berentzen-Gruppe was able to secure solid financing. Taking a deeper look into assets and liabilities, we see that in 2024 we have a net debt position of EUR 6.6 million, calculating as EUR 15.9 million financial debt minus EUR 9.3 million cash.
This is nearly on a level like the year before. Although we had lower financing needs, taking into consideration that the net usage of factoring was reduced by EUR 4.5 million, but as factoring is an off-balance item, our on-balance venture was nearly stable in comparison to 2023. However, the dynamic gearing ratio has improved due to a significant increase in EBITDA. Thus, the ratio is quite far away from any type of covenant breaches, which are basically contained in our credit agreements. As investment as a trade working capital had huge impacts on our financial positions, let me please explain what the level of trade working capital was before inflation started and how it developed since then. Inflation and growth have triggered the trade working capital level massively.
The trade working capital of the Berentzen-Gruppe rose from minus EUR 1.1 million in 2021, the years before the war in Ukraine, by approximately EUR 18 million at year's end 2024. This is more than 10% of the balance sheet total. What are the main influences? Firstly, we have to talk about inventories. Higher material prices had a huge impact on the inventory value, which rapidly rose from approximately EUR 40 million in 2021 by EUR 10 million to around about EUR 50 million in 2022-2023, although we managed the inventory reach and units in stock very actively. By getting better each year, we succeeded in reducing inventory value from the peaks in 2022-2023 by EUR 3 million-EUR 4 million to approximately EUR 48 million at year's end 2024. Secondly, we see higher trade receivables.
Sales prices and sales volume growth in the non-factored businesses like non-alcoholic beverages and spirits in Turkey have led to a higher level of trade receivables. The increase from 2020- 2024 amounts to EUR 3.3 million. Thirdly, in the same period, the total of trade payables and alcohol tax liability decreased by EUR 6.9 million as a result. Lower short-term liabilities were not helpful for the counter-financing of the higher short-term assets. Compared to 2023, the increase in trade working capital was therefore low overall, and we are confident that the peak has been reached. On the next slide, we can see a very satisfying development. After two years with a negative sign, we have succeeded in generating a positive free cash flow again. Let me please explain this in more detail.
The operating cash flow was increased to EUR 12.6 million, mainly due to the significant improvement in our consolidated EBITDA. In addition, the development of our total working capital resulted in a significantly smaller minus than in the previous year. After - EUR 12.8 million in 2023, it now amounts to - EUR 5.4 million composed of the developments in trade working capital and other working capital items. The lower cash outflow from investing activities has also a positive effect. In 2024, investments totaling EUR 6.6 million were offset by cash inflows from the disposal of assets amounting to EUR 2.2 million. This cash flow is related to the sale of the Grüneberg site. We are convinced that we will be able to continue this positive development of our free cash flow also in 2025. Let us now take a look at our dividend proposal.
Together with the Supervisory Board, we will propose the payment of a dividend of EUR 0.11 per share for the upcoming annual general meeting. We have decided to take this step despite the negative consolidated net profit in 2024. On the one hand, we have generated a positive free cash flow, which means that we have sufficient liquidity and do not need to finance a dividend with debt. On the other hand, we remain convinced of the positive path of the Berentzen-Gruppe in the time to come. At least we hope to ease our shareholders' concerns coming from the regrettable performance of the share price since autumn 2024. Most of you are probably aware of the reason for this. MainF irst previously. The second largest shareholder has yet to liquidate its position in Berentzen shares, and it has done so via the German stock exchanges. That is not all.
In February 2024, 2025, almost 80% of the share capital had been created, which means this is far more than what is usual and what my first has sold. Nevertheless, with the exception of my first, our shareholder base has not changed significantly. All in all, I am distressed to a considerable share price loss, although it has recovered somewhat in recent days. There may be a good reason for the recovery. The share price at the end of 2024 corresponds to an EV EBITDA measurement of just 4. This should be an attractive entry opportunity. However, it is well known that micro-caps like Berentzen are not so much on institutional investors' watchlists. Our good and increased annual operating profit and the positive free cash flow will hopefully change that. Over and over, and over to Oliver again.
Thank you, Ralf.
Let us now look at the forecast of the 2025 financial year. We continue to stand by the Building Berentzen 2028 corporate strategy that we published last year. Our strategy also includes the first medium-term forecast with ambitious targets for 2028. This is also reflected in our forecast for the 2025 financial year. We expect consolidated revenues to be in the range of EUR 180 million-EUR 190 million. Please keep in mind that we expect a significant negative turnover effect from the Grüneberg sale. Therefore, adjusted, we forecast a growth in our consolidated revenues. For our key earnings figures, we expect our EBITDA to be in the range of EUR 19 million-EUR 21 million and our consolidated EBIT to be in the range of EUR 10 million-EUR 12 million.
Due to the numerous measures and marketing investments for future growth, we will not be able to short-termly increase our EBIT even more this year. However, we expect our intensified marketing and media initiatives to have a sustainable and long-term impact on our growth dynamics that plays into our Berentzen 2028 journey. In a nutshell, we are aiming for further growth in all key figures this year. We are confident that we will achieve these targets through a series of projects and initiatives. I would like to give you a brief outlook on this. In 2025, we are significantly increasing our marketing budgets. Our key focus is on innovative products and marketing measures to further strengthen our brands and reach new target groups. A milestone we already achieved was the launch of our popular Mio Mio brand in the 0.33 liter can as of February of this year.
This step allows us to tap into new sales channels such as petrol stations and drugstores, which are particularly suitable for the distribution of beverages and cans. We are expanding the reach and the availability of our strategic focus brand Mio Mio, which continues to play a key role in our portfolio. We have also selectively expanded our product range in this service segment. With the introduction and launch of three new products under our focus brands, Berentzen and Puschkin, we are appealing to different customer segments and relying on innovation to further drive our growth in this segment. The biggest highlight of our marketing activities is the return of the Berentzen brand into mass media like television, accompanied by an attention-grabbing campaign that focuses on community and joy of life.
This TV presence not only strengthens the brand image, but also increases the visibility of our products and helps to generate additional demand. These measures emphasize our strategic focus on strong brands and innovative products, accompanied by effective marketing activities that are designed to further consolidate and expand our market position. Now I would like to hand over to Ralf for the final information.
Yeah, final information. Finally, let's take a very brief look at our financial calendar, which you can also find regularly updated on our corporate website. As you can see, we are taking part in different conferences also this year to get in touch with our shareholders and to inspire new shareholders for the Berentzen-Gruppe. I would also like to take this opportunity to invite you to our virtual annual general meeting on May 23. The convening will be published in a few days.
We would be delighted if many of you attend. Thank you for your attention. Now we are happy to receive your questions.
Thank you, Ralf and Oliver, for your presentation. Now let's move on to the questions. We already have a first one. What growth is expected for Mio Mio this year? How much turnover is expected to be achieved with the Mio Mio cans this year?
First of all, we expect significant growth of Mio Mio, which should result in double-digit growth in turnover this year. It is very tough to be specific on the turnover and the turnover of the cans. As you all know, and as I presented, we are still in a constant of a very big retailer, which we are working very hard on to get that solved.
Of course, to be in a crisis situation with this kind of a key retailer in Germany means that growth dynamics are currently still a little bit, yeah, limited as long as the crisis situation is ongoing. For us, it is very important that we keep the price level and the margin level of Mio Mio in a very healthy position. That is why we need to be very consequent on the demands for price increases of the retailer. Again, we are quite confident that, number one, we will achieve double-digit growth in Mio Mio this year again. Number two, a big, big helper will be the cans this year. This year, we planned round about 7-8 million cans in pieces for this year.
Of course, this also very much depends on how quickly are we building up distribution, but the resonance of the market is extremely strong. Can you quantify the increase in marketing spend and its distribution? Regarding capital allocation, are you considering expanding to new brands or verticals? Given your comments about the tracked valuation, would you consider doing buybacks this year? For the first part, I can give you an overview about the marketing spendings. Last year, in 2024, we spent round about EUR 2.5 million in the marketing campaign. Sorry, 2023. 2024, this already increased to EUR 3.5 million, and this year we aim to spend EUR 5 million. If you look at our spendings, that would mean that the spendings in 2025 would be already doubled versus 2023. You remember that in the building Berentzen 2028, we said we would triple the marketing spendings up to 2028.
We are quite delivering against our strategy, which we displayed in the building Berentzen 2028 program. Let me have a look at the second part. New brands and verticals. I mean, currently, we are strongly focusing on our core products. As I said before, there is a lot and plenty of room for new products within our current brands. That's why last year, we launched very successfully the Berentzen-Smoothie Shots. This year, Berentzen will come in a new flavor like Berentzen Lemon. Of course, the biggest and most important launch this year will be the brand Mio Mio in cans. There is plenty of room for growth in our current brand setup and our core brands. However, the market is very dynamic. There are a lot of interesting new products available out there. There are always startups coming in.
We are talking to many of them with their ideas. We will be prepared to really think about acquiring smaller brands when they appear and when they have already proven that they can be successful in the market. There is no concrete plan at that time, but again, the market is very dynamic. There are quite some offers out there. Not all is very attractive, but some of them are. Let's see where it leads us to, but we are generally ready for new brands in our portfolio in the future. The questions left, I do not know.
Doing buybacks?
Buybacks of shares, yeah. Of course, our approval for buying back shares will end legally with the beginning of the AGM in 2024 on the 23rd of May.
We always consider this, but actually, we are not taking this into consideration, but we will take the chance just to put this issue on the AGM again so that we will have a stock decision for the next five years. When times come, in the times, it should be a good option just to buy back shares, but actually, we're not planning this.
Another question: how much turnover do the Berentzen Minis account for last year? How do sales of Berentzen Minis look this year compared to last year with regard to this year's carnival? I had the feeling that there were some out-of-stock costs. Is there any feedback from the supermarkets?
Yeah, probably I can, I guess, if you want to have a concrete number last year, I will check it on the Minis because I don't have it at hand.
The thing is that the minis, they had a double-digit growth last year, but I will figure out the concrete number right now. On the minis, yes, we were sold 100 minis for carnival. We have a very strong carnival season on the minis. We're not displaying turnover and figures, but there is a high, high double-digit number of increase in sales in minis in the first two months, which included carnival this year compared to last year. We have a strong, strong, strong growth on the minis. Of course, our target is to continue the double-digit growth on the minis because the demand on the minis is extremely positive. On the streets of carnival in Germany, we are by far the market leader in this segment. You're right, the out-of-stocks are true. We have been totally sold out of minis.
The orders were overwhelming, and the orders exceeded our capacity to produce these minis, although we have high-speed lines. That is why we are very confident that the minis can grow double-digit this year further. I have a look at more than 40% growth. It is more than 40% growth in the first two months, in comparison to the last two months in 2020. The overall minis in total, and the turnover in the German market only for Berentzen was more than EUR 4 million in turnover of the brand.
We have no questions so far. Last chance. All right, this one is in German. Which financial results do you expect for this year? Will the financial result be better due to lower interest costs?
Yes, we expect that.
I already explained that in a sentence, in one sentence only, but our expectation is that we will have decreasing financial costs all in all. I told you that the three-month EURIBOR already has come down since, let me say, it was, I think, March 2024, but the average costs were very high in 2024 in comparison to 2023. This is not going on. The three-month EURIBOR just actually is about 2.4% yearly, and it was at a peak of 4%. You can imagine that the difference of 1.6 or 160 basis points is very, very evident of our financing costs on the one hand. The other hand is the business at 2020, as I already explained. It's interest cost bearing because we have a lot of great working capital to bear.
There is a financing burden or financing bearing debt, which lays on this working capital requirement at Turkish business. These interest expenses are very, very high due to inflation and the exchange rates Turkey versus euro. We have interest costs of about 50%-60% by financing the trade bearing of Turkish business. As you may hear from me just a few minutes ago, the increase of the interest expenses mainly related to more than 90% of the Turkish business. Let me underline, by the way, that the Turkish business, even after interest costs and even after IAS 29 effects, is profitable at all. It depends a little bit in 2025 how the Turkish business is just going on, but all in all, we will have, of course, decreasing financing costs.
Could you tell a bit more about export plans for 2025, especially for the Benelux? How much represents exports revenues of the total revenues? Isn't there more margin for growth? Thank you.
Yes, generally yes, especially for the, let's say, for the branded business in Germany, we do have export initiatives. Benelux is a strong area for growth, especially Berentzen is a very strong brand in the Netherlands. The Netherlands will also benefit from the innovations we're doing, like the Berentzen smoothies when we start to introduce them. The minis business is very attractive for them. There is a chance for our brands to go in the Europe external markets, especially in the Benelux. Also, and this is even more valid, our private label business is very strong in internationalizing its business. We are in the Benelux business, for example, we are a strong partner of Colruyt in Belgium with premium private label. We have increased our business in the premium private label in Austria and in Switzerland. Generally, there is growth, especially when it comes to premium private label. We see a lot of opportunities to work together with more international retailers who we can attract with our solutions for premium private label. Number two, this business is going to grow this year. When you ask me about what's the current international business on our group, it's all not so easy to tell. It's around about 25% of our overall turnover. Sometimes we work together with German retailers who are internationally subsidiaries. The very clear cuts to show the figure is not so easy. Generally, roughly, it's about 25% of our revenues is international.
I just look for the page in our annual accounts. It is on page 125, where you can see the details of our external revenues, international revenues.
By the way, sorry to add one more thing. The Mio Mio can is one big weapon to be faster on the internationalization of Mio Mio. You know that so far we only had these returnable glass bottles, which for some countries is quite difficult to handle and also logistics are quite difficult. With the new Mio Mio cans, we see a good opportunity to have much lower market entry barriers for the brand Mio Mio in foreign countries. That is probably important to know.
All right. There are no more questions. We have reached the end for today. Thanks again for sharing the insight with us, Oliver and Ralf. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for your participation.
If you have any questions afterwards, please do not hesitate to contact me and my department. We hope to see you soon, maybe at our AGM. All the best. Have a good day. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye.