Good morning, everyone. It's a beautiful day. It's a little bit different from the bad weather where we all were in, at least earlier in the last year. Thanks for joining us for full-year results. We have seen each other only one month ago, on the 5th of March exactly. Today, we'll have a closer look at the full-year results of 2024. There are no new surprises on the numbers since our meeting of the 5th of March. I'll first go into my CEO statement. As I said last time, in the beginning of March, the units are our strongholds. You can see this as the organic growth of 0.5%, with the sales that have been decreased only slightly, up to CHF 642 million, and the EBITDA margin of 6.2%, adjusted EBITDA margin, of course.
Of course, you can see that the results are highly impacted by our adjustment we needed to make. The main positive drivers are for Culinor, for instance, Biotta and Gesa, who reached their best results ever. We see that the food service channels continue to grow, and there is also an important growth in the innovative product range and concepts. Again, it is the concepts that did it. I give you some two examples. Culinor, with a pinch of whiskey, with its high-end new concept, and Biotta, with its Wellness Woche. You know, it is a kind of boxes that they presented. The negative factors are, of course, the tender losses. What can I say about it? We were not sharp and focused enough. We took already the necessary measures on this in a new deal-making approach. As for the personnel costs, I can give you the example of Casualfood.
There was, for Casualfood, especially in the summertime, a much too big deviation in 2024 between the number of employees and what they call the PAX, the numbers of passengers that were in the airports. Therefore, we also took already the necessary measures, not only on finding better KPIs, but also with a thorough assessment of the business itself. On the next slide, you can see the bridge on our organic growth that was 0.5%. We see here that in the last three years, we had a steady organic growth. Maybe very important is that you see that the international segment grows steadily. You can also see that mainly in the year 2022, with the opening again of the airports at Casualfood. Important is also to see here that ORIOR is able to raise the prices also.
In between 2021 and 2022, it was still volume-driven. As from 2022 and further on to 2024, we were able to have more a price-driven approach, where the volume dropped and the overall prices were able to grow. Let's go and have a look at the convenience segments. At the segments as a whole, but first we have three important segments, and they divided almost everyone in one-third of our volume. First, start with the convenience segment. In the first one, in the convenience segment, we have a decline of almost 5%, up to about CHF 210 million. When we look there in the competitive centers who are part of the convenience segment, the first one is Fredag. We see an overall growth in food service, but on the other hand, further decline in the plant-based business.
We talked about that in the beginning of March. It all had to do with the quality of the products in the markets and the price, which was still higher than the meat products, and the fact that it's perceived from the consumer as highly processed products. However, we see some promising leads in the next years to come. The second unit in the convenience segment is Le Patron. There we suffered from a tender loss, but are working our way back into this market. We also have a new CEO, Michel, who's doing a very good job at Le Patron. We turn to our third unit in the convenience segment. It's Pastinella. This especially has a lot of success with its Italian Garofalo brand, performing well because of the al dente, the higher demand of al dente pasta products.
The fourth is Biotta, who is in his core business surfing on the healthy trends as they are already doing for some years. On the main positive drivers and challenges, I only want to pick out one more, and that's about the product mix. We see here in the convenience segment a loss in sales because we see a loss in sales in high-margin products, and that compares to growth in lower-margin products coming from more commodity products. We go to our second segment, which is the refinement segment. It's also a little bit bigger than the other ones, with 36%. In that segment, we saw a growth of about 1.3%, bringing the net sales to almost CHF 250 million. About the competitive competence centers in the refinement segment, we see first Rapelli. It has a solid performance on sales, and especially also on the food service.
The Rapelli brand is still holding strong over the years. The second one is Spiess. We have a stable top line, of course. It is impacted by the impairments and also what we needed to do. It is not well performing, and we encountered some important losses. We have now a new team in place who is focusing on the portfolio, first of all, the GM1, and also the personnel costs. When we look at the main drivers in this segment, the positives and also the negatives, I want to pick out two of them. One is the pork prices, which increased a lot in 2024, especially when we are in the pork cycle. Second is the loss of a major order in Albert Spiess that already hit us in the last quarter of 2024 and 2023, but became in full effect in 2024.
We go then to our third segment, the international segment, with 31%. There we also see a growth of 2.5%, bringing up the sales up to about CHF 204 million in 2024. About the competence centers, first of all, we have Culinor Food Group, who had the best performance ever. That is also maybe because Culinor was able to pass through its price increases after the food inflation of the corona times. We have in the competence center also Casualfood, who had a launch of new concepts, and Gesa showing renewed solid growth with trendy juices like beetroot. On the positive drivers and the challenges and negative influence, I pick out, first of all, the pass-through of higher input costs, what we discussed as an example at Culinor.
On the negatives, one, we see an inflation-driven weakness in the sales market, and we see overall that Europe suffers from price and wage inflations. Price inflations give us influences on the product mix and the wage inflation that gives us a big influence on the labor cost. This we do not see in Switzerland, of course. We would like to continue after these three segments. We would like to continue now more to go into details of the financials, and Sacha will take that part. Sacha?
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[Foreign language] Sacha. I would like to conclude with this last slide as our ESG team, despite a very difficult business year, did a tremendous good job in 2024. We had three publications. The first one, it's our seventh sustainability report in accordance to GRI, the Global Reporting Initiative, and this for the entire group. The second is that the complete carbon footprint, including Scope 3 , was published, and the third one was our sustainability strategy 2030. We also met two important targets: the 80% improvement index, which was achieved again in 2024, and drafting up the SBTi target, the Science-Based Targets initiative, what is planned to be submitted by the summer of 2025.
We also launched our internal climate fund to reduce our footprint, and because of all of this, we received a prize, the first place in the zRating Corporate Governance Rating by Inrate. We are very happy about it. Overall, we can say that 2024 was a year not to remember. However, we did an in-depth assessment, learned from it, and took the necessary measures. As Sacha told you already, we will need to take a long part of that into 2025, especially in the first half of 2025. We feel very positive and confident on our way forward. Now we can make time again to start building our business and to spend also the good relations and the strongholds of our units. I thank you so much, and I will leave now the word back to Mara, who will start.
Thank you, Filip.
[Foreign language] We now open the Q&A session. If you have a question, please raise your hand. We start with the first. [Foreign language]
Hello, good morning , good morning , Filip. Hi, Sacha, hi, Milena. I have four questions, if I may. Sacha [Foreign language]
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[Foreign language] Filip .
Okay, thank you for that question. We should always be vigilant when there are gossips in the market, of course. Of course, we'd like to reduce our debt levels and also have enough money for Capex for efficiency reasons into our units. Therefore we keep every option open, but it should only stay with assessing the options. Normally we have enough net cash flow going with the conversion, as Sacha was telling, in order to not necessarily be forced to sell or do anything else. Honestly, we need to keep all options open, of course.
Okay, many thanks, Philipp. [Foreign language] , Sacha.
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[Foreign language] Plant-Based, Philipp.
Thank you for the question on Plant-Based. You have to see two drivers in Plant-Based Business. First of all, you have the market, how is the market doing generally, and second, how are we in that market doing?
First of all, I'd like to discuss a little bit on the market, as I said also, that what were the three drivers which were the reason why that market collapsed a little bit is first of all the quality did not meet the expectations of the consumer. We started in ORIOR to what we call the third generation in the quality of extruded products, which we are almost finishing up and also starting to present to customers. On the price, we know that meat prices went up, so as you know in a bigger perspective, that helps because that means that the price will be closer to the meat prices. On the process level, that's still a big issue.
On what it's about for the ORIOR Group, I just told you that we were working on a higher quality of the product, but we also have some promising leads that could help us, but they are too soon to say that we already signed a new contract. As most probably a lot of producers, we are all working on trying to get that market back on its feet and start growing because eventually it will need to come back as we have a bigger footprint with animal proteins and that's what it's a little bit about. Eventually we also have everything that takes about the animal welfare. On the long run, I guess we're fine. It's just how fast will the market pick up again.
As most other producers are doing, ORIOR is still investing a lot of time and resources in doing our part in bringing up that for us it was quite a segment where there were higher margins. I hope that helps a little bit answering your question.
Yes, thanks a lot. I'll leave the mic to the next one.
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[Foreign language] Manuel Lang from Vontobel. [Foreign language]
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[Foreign language] CEO search for Filip.
Yes.
Okay, about the CEO-Search, yes, we are still working on finding a new CEO, but of course it should not be led in time, but rather finding the perfect fit. I think we all agree that Monika, who would come in as a delegate in these turbulent times, would be the best fit for now until further notice. That's what we really talked about. Monika is really into the business. She has, she knows it for years and exactly this is exactly what we need at this time. We all find it a very good idea and we should continue on this until we are coming in some calmer waters, what I think will happen in 2025 and see how it comes.
It should not be something we should pinpoint on a certain date, you know, by then. It should be really a really good fit for the company. Okay.
[Foreign language] We come to the next question from Mr. Gerald Vert, please.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I would have three and would take them one by one if that's okay. The first one is on raw materials. What is causing the shortage of pork? Is it related to some illnesses? And could you roughly quantify how much does pork represent from your total material costs?
That's a very good question. Listen, the raw material, there's this pork cycle. This pork cycle is lasting now a bit longer than usual.
This is, if you look back in history, this has shorter swings, and that is why the whole industry is suffering on that one, not only in Switzerland, but also in Europe. There are some diseases in Europe around porks, not yet as far as I understand in Switzerland, which is influencing the pricing, but mainly in Switzerland, we talk about the shortage. It is basically we do not have enough pork meat, and that is why prices are going up. On the quantity, I cannot give you more details right now.
Okay, okay, thank you. The second one is on Culinor. How is the process of onboarding new clients in the Destelbergen plant? Can you give a rough indication of the capacity that you have been able to book already in this plant?
Yes, we closed already a deal with IKEA.
That's an important one for us, as it's a big group, and it's not only normally IKEA works on, you know, country by country a little bit, but they came in as we did an assessment with Simon- Kucher, and that's how we eventually came to IKEA, and they agreed to work with us on a more overarching level. We will start with them. It will, of course, be done step by step, but this year we would start with the soups, and it will start also with the lamb shanks. Normally, both were planned by quarter four, but it was already pulled up, I think, as from quarter two or at the end of quarter two, the beginning of quarter three. That's a very positive driver for Culinor. Yes.
Okay, thank you.
The last one, could you maybe remind us of the exposure that you have to retail in each segment? Is it 50/50 retail and food service for each segment, or how shall we roughly think about this?
I do not have those numbers right in mind now, Marty, but yes, food service is growing. Yeah, it is growing faster than retail. This is true, yes. What is the division by segment? I have to pass on that question. In the international, it is quite difficult because Culinor, for instance, is working on a very high percentage rate with the retailers as it is than with the food service. Of course, if you add then Casualfood, should we see this, yeah, that is fully food service. None of it is, so we need to find out for the international segmented company by company.
That is something we should, you know, try to, we have those figures honestly, but not at hand.
Okay, I mean, for me, what is more relevant on refinement and convenience because it is more exposed to Switzerland, but of course, we can discuss this at another time. Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you very much. We come to the next question from Mr. Mountassamy, please.
Hi, thank you very much for having me. I am a private investor. I would like to have my first question is on Migros. Could you quantify how many percentage of your total turnover is Migros? And as per your last communication in December, the adjustment in the Migros portfolio should be finished. Is this still the case? And the second question is the nomination of Mr. Fehlmann, which is obviously kind of as an expert in capital markets, smells something like a capital increase.
Are you planning to make any capital increases? Because from the cash flow side, I do not see any projections for 2025, and you are not able to reduce the debt. There are some rumors around about the capital increase. Thank you very much.
I will take the first question on Migros, on the share. We have roughly 22.5% of all revenues going into Migros. That is still our biggest customer. The portfolio changes at Migros are still ongoing this year. Migros has started a bigger exercise in also pushing national promotions versus regional promotions. There is a big portfolio shift going on at Migros. We just recently had, for instance, an innovation workshop with Migros together at one of our sites where we could bring up our new innovations. Collaboration is still very tight and fruitful.
On the rumors on the capital increase, I cannot comment because I do not know where they come from and for sure not from ORIOR. I give the word to Filip. Do you want to add anything on the Migros side or?
On the Migros side, we can only say that, of course, Migros is a very big customer for us, who is also in, let's call it a restructuring mode, trying to also do a lot of portfolio. That brings along a lot of stress, of course. On the other hand, it also brings opportunities as Migros is trying to get the bigger deals in chicken and even in salami, but only the bigger deals. They found out that the smaller production volumes they are making, they are not so profitable as what they expected them to be.
That gives us a huge opportunity in finding our deals together with Migros. We are working on that day by day, and we are quite positive about it so that there are some more opportunities that might come out of that. Of course, it takes time because we also ask questions, and then they say, can you do this or that? Then we ask other questions and they say, but it is not still decided upon whether we would like to keep making this product or yes or no. That is what the work is that has been done on a daily basis. Of course, the restructuring of Migros is also not done in a couple of weeks. We will take it along in 2025, but we are quite confident about it. Yes.
I just want to come back quickly on the question of Marty on the share of retail and food service. Overall, the whole ORIOR group, as a rule of thumb, it's like three quarters is retail sales and one quarter is food service sales. That's the overall figure. Okay. Any other questions?
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Yes, hi, Nils Lauritsch from Octavian. Thank you for taking my questions. Maybe on the first one, you say that Migros found out that maybe going after the small pockets is not as profitable. I mean, why do you see this maybe as an opportunity? Because if we look at some of the most successful competitors gaining market share, they are rather cutting their portfolio.
Do you see risk there that Migros will go and maybe cut these smaller pockets instead of maybe really being an opportunity for you guys? That would be my first question.
Okay, thank you for the question. The reason is, as ORIOR is a different business case than what the production sites of Migros are. It's not that we are in the niches and doing everything we like to do, but our lines are much more flexible than the ones that are at Migros, like Micarna, etc. In fact, that is an opportunity for us as they are not strong in changing or changeovers in lines, doing different products. That's the reason of our existence. That's how we are different as earlier compared to the Micarna and all things. That's why we think there's an opportunity.
Of course, portfolio, we do it on a daily basis, and especially with it already in 2025. I am a strong believer in portfolio, and if it doesn't add value, you know it's scraps, so we shouldn't be doing it. That's the deal-making we have to do the whole time with Migros, also saying, listen, we would like to make a smaller product for us, but you also give us some others with higher volumes or something. There are a lot of things to do, especially in a deal-making approach, I think, yeah. I hope you understand.
If we go maybe to the second question, I mean, you have increased the prices a lot in the recent years, or let's say at least every year. You also mentioned at the same time that maybe in certain products you're not as competitive on the price end.
I mean, are you going to still keep on increasing the prices this year? I mean, are you also looking maybe at certain price cuts?
I think if I can take this question, first of all, we try to be as efficient as possible in our supply chain. That is the main task we have, and that is why we are still investing punctually in our units and the supply chain. We try to squeeze out every penny in the whole workflow, I would say. If this is not enough, we have to increase prices, obviously. We will not cut prices in 2025. This is not the strategy ORIOR has. We either gain efficiency or we increase, if this is not enough, our top line by negotiating conditions, promotions, and all that stuff. Yeah.
Okay, and then if I may, I have two more questions.
Maybe on the accounts payable, I mean, it is a big difference. Maybe I missed that, but you also said you had some adjustments and one-offs there, but it is quite a high amount. Can you maybe comment more on that end?
Yes, I can give you some more color on that one. The accounts payables, you know, there was beyond a normal networking capital program or measures, it was overstretched by not paying suppliers, especially for the year-end closing and mid-year closing. I am a believer of sustainable networking capital programs where we negotiate with all stakeholders different payment terms, with customers and suppliers, and also try to increase inventory terms. This is what we stopped by doing these excessive silent weeks by the end of 2024. Okay, so there are no one-offs there. It is more you guys adjusting. Okay. No one-offs. No one-offs.
Maybe my final question would be on other operating costs. I mean, if we look at some of the cost increases, you had energy, there is also rent changes. I mean, can you maybe give us more color on that? Should we expect rent to go up as you maybe consolidate Smarts eller and expand the international segment? Yes, maybe if you touch on personnel cost, energy, and rent. Thank you.
Yeah, and personnel is a good question. Personnel costs have been impacted by the restructuring and the social plan in Belgium. They are also impacted by the restructuring costs, which we booked on corporate level, and by the, as Filip mentioned earlier, by the higher personnel costs in summer at Casualfood, where we expected a bigger travel PAX. This is the main drivers there.
On the Mietaufwand , we basically had more revenue-dependent meat and, of course, a consolidation of Smarts eller would also increase the Mietaufwand respectively. This is a very lease-intensive business. At the airports, you know that also new tenders, especially in Frankfurt, competitors are going up to 30% of revenues in lease. That is not how we run stores. We have clear goals of how much rent should be, and this is not in this magnitude, but it is one of the most important cost drivers in this kind of business model. Gut.
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Okay, I will try to answer that question, although it's not an easy one, of course. We've changed a little bit in strategy with the [Foreign language] in Oberentfelden, [Foreign language] .
We were initially, two years ago, it was originally planned that we would bring together three companies in one new building. Eventually, we seen that that is not a good solution if different companies with different products are in the same building. We went away from that idea, and then we said, listen, we want to spend less money in concrete and spend more money on new lines, more efficiency, etc. That is now exactly what we are going to do. You ask me if we will have other [Foreign language], maybe yes, not in the first coming years, because we want to spend the CapEx we have or the money we have on CapEx for increasing our efficiencies at the units as we are.
Of course, if there for any reason or big deals we are making, there's a necessity to do something else, we will change our mind, but you know the big [Foreign language] projects are not at this moment on our plate.
Okay, but just my question was, in general, is that a subject that is for the board to decide as well, or was that something that management basically went ahead and the board kind of was surprised and there was a firing of the previous CEO and so forth, or is it rather something that the board was fully committed and on board with, if you say this already started two years ago?
Because that's how I assume a company would work in terms of corporate governance set for larger, maybe not every little purchase here and there, but for larger strategic decisions and especially larger deals where you buy a CHF 20 million real estate property that this would be requiring the approval of the board of directors.
Okay. No, no, no. It was together with the board and the executive committee. They were all aligned on this. I cannot say that it would be or it was different. Of course, in the last three years, or let's say three years ago, it was also based on a different business case, which not really happened eventually. You need to make your decisions.
It is not that there was nobody aligned on that, or that we had differences in alignment, or that there was no alignment between the executive committee and the board. It is not the case. No.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you.
[Foreign language] Filip . [Foreign language] .
Thank you. One second. I did everything. I told everything. Thank you for the questions. They were also enlightening for us. Let us do our job, and then we will be back here with better results. I should say it hopefully, but that is what we are here to do, of course. I hope you can enjoy the day, and thank you for having so much interest in our group. Thank you.
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Thank you.
Bye-bye. Have a nice day.
Thank you so much.
[Foreign language] Thank you.