Lindt & Sprüngli gains market shares and increases profit

According to the company, the strategic realignment of Russell Stover is making progress, but will take more time than originally anticipated. Excluding Russell Stover, a growth of 6.6% can be reported for the first half-year. Given the challenging market conditions, this represents an above-average result and is in line with the company`s medium-/long-term strategic targets. It underlines the essential soundness of Lindt & Sprüngli’s core business that generates approximately 75% of Group sales with the Lindt brand.

The “Europe” segment generated sales of CHF 759.8 m, which represents an organic growth of 6.0%. Despite ongoing shopping tourism in its neighboring countries and the continuing expansion of hard-discount chains, the Swiss domestic market recorded positive sales results. The very good results of the subsidiaries in Germany and the UK – the two largest chocolate markets in Europe – are particularly worth mentioning, as are Austria and Spain, where the increases are in the high single-digit and even double-digit range. Also noteworthy are the positive developments in the recently developed markets, such as the subsidiaries in Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic, which are showing great promise and strong growth rates.

The result in the “NAFTA” segment amounted to CHF 558.1 m, which corresponds to an organic decrease of 3.0%. In the “Rest of the World” segment, very good progress was made in the emerging markets of Brazil, China, Japan, and South Africa in particular. The segment’s sales amounted to CHF 230.8 m (+ 14.0 %).

The Lindt & Sprüngli Group’s profits also continued to make good progress in the first half of the year. Operating profit (EBIT) rose to CHF 105.0 m as of 30 June 2017, representing an EBIT-margin increase by 20 bp to + 6.8%. The Group’s net income was CHF 76.3 m (+ 5.7%). Operational cash flow rose to CHF 343.9 m.