- Increase of 8.6% in the operating result (EBIT) before non-recurring expenditures
- Sales declined by 2% due to special factors
- Focus on successive improvement in profitability in 2015 and 2016
Hamburg, 7 May 2015. At today`s annual press conference in Hamburg, the wine trading group Hawesko Holding AG (HAW DE, HAWG.DE, DE0006042708) presented its annual report for 2014 as well as its three-month report for the period from January to March 2015.
Consolidated sales in the first three months of the current fiscal year declined by 2.0% from the same quarter in the previous year, namely from € 108.0 million to € 105.8 million due to special factors. These included primarily the discontinuation of sales from the French subsidiary Château Classic in liquidation, which had become unprofitable. Moreover, a substantial part of the revenues from the delivery of the Bordeaux subscription wines will shift to the second quarter this year. Without these two factors, sales figures would have been at the previous year`s level. The specialist wine-shop retailing segment of the Group (Jacques` Wein-Depot) grew by 4.3% (like-for-like 3.4%). In the wholesale segment, sales declined by 5.6% compared to the previous year for the aforementioned reasons. Sales in the distance-selling segment remained 3.1% below the comparable quarter in the previous year, in which an extremely high figure was reached due to the special anniversary offers. The consolidated operating result (EBIT), adjusted for non-recurring charges, rose by 8.6% to € 4.2 million in the first quarter of 2015 (previous year: € 3.8 million). The non-recurring charges resulted from a personnel provision of approximately € 6 million as well as from follow-on costs of the takeover process. This resulted in a deficit excluding deductions for non-controlling interests of € -2.0 million as the first-quarter result for the Group (previous year: net income of € 2.5 million), corresponding to € -0.22 per share, after € 0.28 per share in the previous year.
After the departure on 30 April 2015 of Alexander Margaritoff, the company`s CEO for many years, the Hawesko management board currently consists of four members who are in charge and leading the entire group jointly. At the beginning of the year, the Hawesko supervisory board had already initiated a structured process to search for a new chief executive officer.
The Hawesko management board still considers the general economic and business conditions in Germany to be good, and notes that the figures for the first quarter of 2014 are within expectations. For the full fiscal year 2015, they anticipate an increase in sales in the order of magnitude of 1% compared to the previous year (€ 473 million). The EBIT in 2015 is expected to be approximately € 26-27 million on an adjusted basis (2014 on an adjusted basis: € 24.6 million); on an unadjusted basis, i.e., after the non-recurring charges resulting from the takeover process, it is expected to be approximately € 19-20 million (2014: € 20.1 million). The financial result will presumably be lower than in the previous year and consolidated net income is expected to be in the range of € 12-13 million. The management board expects free cash flow to be on the order of € 17-20 million for 2015.