Hamburg The cooking box supplier Hellofresh is celebrating its tenth anniversary in November with a raffle for Thermomix devices among its customers. The Dax group is giving itself a further increase in the forecast.
Adjusted for currency fluctuations, sales are now expected to increase between 57 and 62 percent in 2021. Most recently, the group had named a range of 45 to 55 percent for the first half of the year. In terms of profit, company boss Dominik Richter continues to expect a heavily adjusted operating margin (Ebitda) of 8.25 to 10.25 percent.
With this, Richter can dispel doubts that Hellofresh will be able to keep a large part of the customers won during the pandemic, although canteens and restaurants are again well frequented. According to the information from late Monday evening, customers ordered a little less than in the previous quarter. Richter attributed this to the holiday season.
However, Hellofresh worked less profitably than in the previous year. The operating profit (EBIT) fell by 55 percent to 28.2 million euros. This is mainly due to increasing investments, but also to higher advertising expenditure. “In order to create the right basis for strong, long-term growth, we have continued to focus on the ongoing expansion of our production capacities,” explained Richter. So there are additional production facilities in which the boxes are packed. Hellofresh also started in Italy and made acquisitions in Australia.
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Hellofresh is aiming for a turnover of 10 billion euros by 2025
On Tuesday morning, he said in a conference call that half of the delivery centers were still in the start-up phase. Since, among other things, employees have to be trained, productivity is still limited. Within the next twelve months, however, the situation will settle in again, so that he expects increasing margins. Hellofresh’s long-term goal by 2025 is ten billion euros in sales and a ten to 15 percent Ebitda margin.
Overall, Hellofresh recently grew at roughly the same rate in the most important markets in Europe and the USA. This brought together 1.42 billion euros in sales in the third quarter – after 0.97 billion in the same period of the previous year. Adjusted operating profit before depreciation (Ebitda) fell to 80 million euros after 115 million euros a year earlier. Hellofresh recently raised its sales forecast for the first half of the year, but lowered its forecast for the operating margin.
The share rose by more than ten percent at the start of the stock market. The share price had more than tripled during the pandemic. In a half-year comparison, however, the price stagnated – until now.
More: How CFO Christian Gärtner led Hellofresh into the Dax.