More sales thanks to price increases: Barry Callebaut sells less chocolate

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The world’s largest chocolate company announced Wednesday that it sold 2.28 million tons of chocolate in the fiscal year that ended at the end of August. This is 1.1 percent less than the previous year. Barry Callebaut attributes this decline to the salmonella case in Wieze, Belgium, last year; It is also due to weak customer demand and rising raw material prices. Barry Callebaut had targeted “constant volume growth” for the full year.

While sales rose 9.7 percent in local currency to 8.5 billion francs, the increase in Swiss francs was still 4.7 percent. But for the company, sales provide less information about business performance than sales volume. Because Barry Callebaut has a model called cost plus. This means that the company passes on price changes for raw materials such as cocoa or energy and transport to industrial customers, for example.

Continuing operating profit (EBIT), which excludes one-off effects from the previous year, such as the costs of the Wieze incident, rose by 5.6 percent to 659.4 million francs. According to Barry Callebaut, this was mainly due to the strong result of its global cocoa business.

As a result, a consolidated profit of 443.1 million francs was achieved. This is 22.8 percent more than the previous year. Shareholders must participate in this in the form of a higher dividend of 29 francs per share. Last year there was a distribution of 28 francs.

With the numbers presented, the company roughly met analysts’ expectations. However, when it came to dividends, they expected significantly more, with an average of 30.52 francs. (SDA)

Source :Blick