Less profit, more dividends at Geberit

class=”sc-97fd9fa8-0 jNFKxv”>

Operating profit (EBITDA) fell 15.0 percent to CHF 909 million, meaning that the previous year’s record result is no longer achieved. The corresponding margin fell by 4.1 percentage points to 26.8 percent, obviously.

The large increase in costs and currency development were mainly responsible for this minus, as the company announced on Wednesday. This clearly had a negative impact on results at all levels. In the analyzed year, raw material prices adjusted for exchange rate effects increased by almost a fifth compared to the same period of the previous year, while energy prices doubled. This resulted in additional costs totaling CHF 244 million.

As a result, net profit fell 6.5 percent to CHF 706 million. While the lower operating result had a negative impact here, a lower tax rate also helped due to the positive one-off effect.

The dividend will be increased again by 10 centimetres, although profits have fallen to CHF 12.60. This will be the twelfth consecutive dividend increase. With the figures presented, Geberit has captured the lower bound of analysts’ expectations for operating results and the upper bound of net profit.

Sales were already announced in January: they fell 2.0 percent to CHF 3.39 billion. In local currencies, on the other hand, organic growth was realized at the rate of 4.8 percent. However, this value was still +11 percent in the first half of the year, which gave a clearly weaker result in the second half.

The slight decrease in sales was due to the negative exchange rate effect of 234 million francs. Local currency growth was driven by strong selling price increases of around 9 percent and continued strong volume growth in the first half of the year.

In the financial year 2023 outlook, Geberit is still not very specific. Ongoing geopolitical uncertainties and macroeconomic risks will make an outlook very difficult. Overall, a challenging environment can be expected for the construction industry in 2023.

Longtime chairman of the board, Albert Baehny plans to qualify himself for another year as the company’s strategic chairman. For this purpose, the age limit, which was 70 before, has been increased to 75.

(SDA)

Source :Blick