Press releases

• Consolidated revenues rise by 6.6% to EUR 185.6 million
• Consolidated earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) come to EUR 7.7 million, that being in the upper half of the forecast range
   

Haselünne, February 6, 2024 – Berentzen-Gruppe Aktiengesellschaft (ISIN: DE0005201602), whose shares are listed on the Regulated Market (General Standard) of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, today published preliminary, as yet unaudited results for the 2023 financial year. The corporate group generated consolidated revenues of EUR 185.6 million, that being 6.6 percent higher than in the 2022 financial year (2022: EUR 174.2 million). Consolidated earnings before interest and taxes (consolidated EBIT) amounted to EUR 7.7 million (2022: EUR 8.3 million). Consolidated earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (consolidated EBITDA) came to EUR 16.1 million (2022: EUR 16.7 million).

“Thus, all the Group’s key performance indicators for the 2023 financial year came out within the most recently published forecast ranges”, said Oliver Schwegmann, CEO of Berentzen-Gruppe Aktiengesellschaft. He expressed satisfaction with the Group’s earnings and revenues in the fourth quarter of financial year 2023. The Berentzen Group generated consolidated EBIT of EUR 2.7 million in the final three months of the financial year, as compared to EUR 1.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. “Thus, we achieved our goal of substantially improving our profit margin quality over the course of the year”, Schwegmann said.

“With respect to the full year 2023, however, we are not satisfied with our earnings quality. Given that our unit sales volumes were slightly lower than in financial year 2022, our revenue growth was entirely due to price increases. Thus, we were not able to increase our gross profit over the level of the previous year”, Schwegmann explained. Another decisive factor was price inflation across the value chain, as a result of which other operating expenses, particularly personnel expenses, were higher than in the previous year. Taken together, these developments were responsible for the drop in consolidated EBIT. In addition, substantially higher market rates of interest and the higher capital costs needed to finance inventories, making them more expensive, led to a significant increase in overall financing expenses.

“Although costs have begun to fall in some places, we do not expect that overall prices of energy and raw materials will revert to the level from before the start of the war in Ukraine. Instead, we are confronted with a new reality. For this reason, we have been working hard to revise our strategic guidelines in the past months. We will present the results of this work in the coming days. As an essential element of our new strategic direction, we will focus our attention on aligning the company, its structures and processes, and its product portfolios even more closely with the goal of generating further growth in our core strategic fields”, Schwegmann said. As part of this effort, he said, the Berentzen Group will also communicate a medium-term forecast for the first time ever. “By means of these steps, we will position the corporate group for reliable, sustainable growth and lay out a clearly defined growth course for the coming years”, Schwegmann said.

The preliminary operating results of Berentzen‐Gruppe Aktiengesellschaft are subject to verification by the independent auditor and approval by the Supervisory Board. The final operating results and further information about the 2023 financial year and the 2024 forecast will be published according to plan on March 28, 2024 with the 2023 Annual Report.