2024-02-22 12:11:46
This content was published on February 22, 2024 – 1:11 p.m.
(Keystone-ATS) The agri-food giant Danone achieved stable turnover in 2023, or even an increase excluding currency effects, still benefiting from the general rise in prices, even if net profit fell by 8% in due to an accounting effect.
The group achieved 27.6 billion euros in sales (26.3 billion francs), a figure almost identical to that of 2022, and a group net profit of 881 million euros, he said. announced Thursday, looking ahead to a year 2024 where inflation will no longer be the group’s growth lever.
Net profit excluding exceptional items, highlighted by the group, increased by 3.5% to 2.3 billion euros.
The year 2023 was “a good year”, welcomed the financial director, Juergen Esser. “All the numbers are going in the right direction.”
Net profit suffered from a charge of 1.4 billion euros due to depreciation, notably 700 million linked to operations in Russia and 400 million due to the sale of two American brands of organic dairy products, Horizon. Organic and Wallaby.
In detail, turnover excluding currency effects increased by 7%. It is driven by the increase in sales prices, which offsets a slight drop in volumes and the sale of less profitable products.
But this trend begins to reverse in the fourth quarter, with a weaker price effect and a positive contribution from the volumes and type of products sold.
“The last time the company experienced volume growth was ten years ago,” emphasized the CFO.
Among the explanations: the removal from the shelves of 20% of products, generally poorly performing, and a choice of products offered for sale more oriented towards margins, summarized Mr. Esser.
In 2023, Danone achieved a better profit excluding exceptional items than expected by analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, but the turnover came out slightly below expectations. Analysts also expected a net profit, group share, of 1.7 billion euros.
The group also announced its intention to pay shareholders a dividend up 5% for the 2023 financial year, to 2.10 euros, a “return to the record level of 2019”.
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