Another Year of Solid Growth at Kerry Group
Despite a challenging macro-economic landscape and the impact of geopolitical issues, Kerry, the global ingredients and flavours and consumer foods group, achieved another year of solid underlying growth ahead of its markets and sustained business margin expansion in 2014. Although reported group revenue dropped 1.4% to €5.8 billion for the year ended 31 December 2014, reflecting the adverse currency translation factors, acquisitions net of disposals and business rationalisation volume loss, Kerry achieved 2.4% continuing business volume growth.
Kerry’s Ingredients & Flavours business reported a 0.2% increase in revenue to €4.3 billion, while reported revenue decreased by 5.8% to €1.5 billion at the Consumer Foods division.
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The Ingredients & Flavours businesses exhibited good volume growth and a strong trading performance. Continuing business volumes increased by 3.4% and net pricing declined by 0.5%.
Kerry Foods continued to successfully progress its business repositioning, with continuing business volumes reduced by 0.7% and net pricing 0.6% lower.
Kerry Group’s trading performance maintained a strong positive momentum benefiting from group-wide business operational improvements due to the 1 Kerry Business Transformation Programme and portfolio repositioning in Kerry Foods. Group trading profit increased by 4.1% to €636 million with like-for-like growth of 5.3%. The group trading profit margin increased by 60 basis points to 11.1%, reflecting an 80 basis points improvement in trading margin in Ingredients & Flavours to 13.7% and a 30 basis points improvement in Kerry Foods’ margin to 8.3%.
Adjusted EPS was up 8.1% to 278.9 cent.
Stan McCarthy, chief executive of Kerry Group, comments: “We recorded another year of good growth, business margin expansion and an 8.1% increase in adjusted earnings per share in 2014. The consumer environment across developed and developing markets is changing rapidly but Kerry is well positioned to capitalise on global growth opportunities. We expect to achieve another year of good growth in 2015.”
