Lindt & Sprüngli has posted a 5.5% increase in sales to CHF 4.31 billion (€3.83 billion) in its 2018 financial year, with organic sales rising by 5.1%.
Its Europe business saw a 5.6% rise, NAFTA was up 2.8%, while its Rest of the World operation was up 10.3%, as the group posted a market share increase in all the markets in which it has a presence.
‘In the financial year 2018, Lindt & Sprüngli achieved solid sales growth, gained substantial market shares and once again grew faster than the overall chocolate market,’ the company said in a statement.
The group also saw an expansion in its own retail network, with around 50 additional shops and cafés opening around the world.
Its popular Lindor brand posted double digit growth over the year.
Challenging Environment
Despite this positive performance, Lindt & Sprüngli said that the market environment remains ‘challenging’, with chocolate markets in Europe and the US increasingly ‘saturated’.
‘Despite this, the premium chocolate market as a whole continues to grow and support the Group’s positioning as a global premium manufacturer – a trend that Lindt & Sprüngli can certainly benefit from,’ it said.
In Europe in particular, it said that its growth was ‘all the more impressive’ due to the flat or negative growth rates seen across the market.
Sales growth was ‘particularly strong’ in the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and Spain, while all the Eastern European subsidiaries even reported double-digit growth, the company said.
In North America, the company said that ‘substantial investments’ were made in the expansion of the logistics network across the entire North American market, which has laid the foundation for future regional growth.
Lindt & Sprüngli said that it anticipates its operating margin to increase with the medium to long term, with ‘sales growth of 5-7% in the mid- to long term and a steady improvement in the operating margin of 20–40 basis points.
‘This should allow Lindt & Sprüngli to continue to grow faster than average in all the markets.’
© 2019 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
