Company announcement
November 14, 2018
Announcement No. 20
Nilfisk, a leading provider of professional cleaning products and services, is announcing its results for Q3 2018.
Highlights for Q3 2018
- In Q3 2018, Nilfisk posted organic growth of 2.6% while delivering an operating performance of 10.5%, an improvement compared to Q3 2017
- During the quarter, Nilfisk executed significant strategic initiatives including the divestment of its Outdoor business and US restauration business. Nilfisk also significantly reduced its production footprint with an exit from five production facilities in total during 2018
- Total revenue amounted to 254 mEUR, driven by a positive development in the EMEA and Specialty Professional segments. The professional business excluding private label demonstrated 4.5% organic growth
- EMEA delivered a strong 8.2% organic growth excluding private label sales (3.9% including private label sales), while the Specialty Professional segment’s performance was satisfactory with 5.7% organic growth. APAC showed 2.0% organic growth, driven primarily by China. With a flat organic growth in Q3, performance in the Americas was below expectations. Specialty Consumer posted negative growth of 1.4% due to the early closure of a production facility
- In Q3, the gross margin was 40.9%, in line with Q3 2017 but impacted by increasing raw material costs, product mix, one-off costs in production and US tariffs
- EBITDA before special items amounted to 26.1 mEUR, up 3.6 mEUR from Q3 2017, leading to an operating performance of 10.5% compared to 8.9% in Q3 2017. Including impact from phantom shares, the EBITDA margin before special items was 10.2% for the quarter
- For the first nine months of 2018 total revenue was 795.6 mEUR, resulting in organic growth of 3.3% and an operating performance of 11.2%. Including impact from phantom shares, the EBITDA margin before special items was 11.5%
- The 2018 outlook is unchanged compared to the company announcement issued October 11, 2018 where guidance was adjusted from 3.0%-4.0% to approximately 2% organic growth and an EBITDA margin before special items in the lower range of 11.5%-12.0%
CEO comment
Commenting on the results, Hans Henrik Lund, CEO of Nilfisk, says:
“In Q3 we have executed significant strategic initiatives supporting the transformation and simplification of Nilfisk. We have completed two strategic reviews while also consolidating and restructuring our production footprint, which will allow us to exit five production sites in 2018. This reduces complexity and supports our future profitability. During the quarter our growth in Americas has been below expectations. However, our branded professional business as a whole grew by 4.5% organically which is the strongest for any quarter of 2018 so far. This was driven by a strong performance in EMEA with 8.2% organic growth excluding private label.”
Conference call
Nilfisk will host a conference call today at 10:00 CET. Please visit investor.nilfisk.com to access the call. Presentation materials will be available on the website prior to the conference call.
To dial in
Denmark: +45 35 15 81 21
UK: +44 (0)330 336 9411
US: +1 646-828-8143
Conference ID: 9066235
Link to webcast: https://edge.media-server.com/m6/p/nnoe27b2
Contact
Investor Relations
Henrik Mølgaard
Head of Investor Relations
T: +45 2046 4948
Media Relations
Louise Refsgaard Klinge
Global Media Relations
T: +45 2067 0833
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