Bakery firm Aryzta has posted a 2.5% decline in group organic revenue in the first quarter of its financial year, with its Aryzta Europe business seeing organic revenue down 0.9%.
The business posted group revenue of €843.9 million for the period, with reported revenue down 2.1%, reflecting the impact from business disposals (-1.6%) and a positive currency impact (+2.0%).
Its Aryzta North America business saw organic revenue down 6.1%, while Aryzta Rest of World bucked the trend to report organic revenue growth of 7.5%.
'Path Towards Stability'
“FY19 established foundations on our path towards stability, performance and growth and Q1 FY20 revenue has performed in line with our expectations," commented Kevin Toland, Aryzta chief executive.
"The negative Q1 organic revenue performance in our North American business was indicated at the time of our FY19 results. Whilst we expect Q2 revenue in North America to remain negative, we expect to see positive evolution emerge in H2 FY20 as new contract volumes are realised."
Toland said that the group is anticipating underlying EBITDA growth at group level for the full year, as the "benefits of the second year of Project Renew [the group's transformation plan] are being realised".
Europe Performance
With regard to the group's Europe performance specifically, Aryzta said that France, Hungary and Switzerland delivered a 'solid' performance for the group, while Germany remained 'relatively stable' despite the impact of insourcing.
In October, as part of the group's streamlining process, Aryzta sold its non-core UK Food Solutions business, to add to the sale of two loss-making businesses in full-year 2019.
Volumes in Europe were down 2.0%, with price/mix positive at 1.1%.
'The focus in Europe continues to be on growing profitable revenue,' the group said in a statement.
© 2019 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
