Interim Report Q3 2024: Further margin expansion and strong cash flow despite mixed growth across divisions
In This Article:
Highlights
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The Hearing division continued to gain significant market share leading to 10% organic revenue growth, while the divisional profit margin increased by 5.9 percentage points to 34.8%
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The Enterprise division was negatively impacted by sell-in pressure due to economic growth challenges in parts of Central Europe, while North America and Rest of World continued its stabilization. Overall, organic revenue growth ended at -7%, while sell-out growth was -3%. Despite the topline development, the company-wide synergies led to a divisional profit margin of 33.8%
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The Gaming & Consumer division executed strongly on the wind-down of the Elite & Talk product lines, while SteelSeries was impacted by a slightly declining market, and some quarterly fluctuations including delays in certain order deliveries. The divisional profit margin ended at 4.0% (including DKK -23 million in extraordinary cost) reflecting significant promotional efforts to wind-down product lines
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The reported EBITA increased 29% to DKK 553 million, driven by group-wide synergies of DKK ~115 million and strict cost focus, but partly off-set by negative operating leverage in Enterprise, the significant promotional efforts in Consumer and DKK -23 million in extraordinary costs. This led to an EBITA margin of 13.3%, equal to a margin expansion of 3.6 percentage points
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Free cash flow excl. M&A ended at DKK 786 million (free cash flow incl. M&A was DKK 892 million) driven by the solid earnings and a positive impact from working capital. Net interest-bearing debt decreased to DKK 9.7 billion, equal to adj. leverage of 3.5x
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GN has throughout the year increased its earnings power and cash flow generation, leading to an upgrade of the guidance on free cash flow excl. M&A to “DKK >1,100 million” and a confirmation of the EBITA margin guidance of “12 to 13%”. Following a somewhat softer market development than earlier anticipated for Enterprise and Gaming, GN adjusts its organic revenue growth guidance to “1% to 2%”
Financial guidance for 2024
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| Organic revenue growth | Reported EBITA margin | Free cash flow excl. M&A (DKK million) |
| GN Store Nord | 1% to 2% | 12% to 13% | >1,100 |
Key assumptions for financial guidance 2024
Hearing division
Following very strong market growth in 2023, GN expects the markets to return to historical growth rates in 2024 supported by ongoing favorable demographic trends. As such, GN projects 4-6% market volume growth and -1% to -2% market ASP decline. Driven by the strong continued momentum and market share gains with ReSound Nexia, GN expects the Hearing division to trend towards the upper half of the original organic growth assumption of 8% to 12%. As a function of the strong growth, the Hearing division is projecting an EBITA margin in the core hearing aid business of around 20% for 2024.