PRFOODS REPORTS RISE IN TURNOVER

PRFoods reports rise in turnover. PRFoods’ unaudited preliminary consolidated turnover in the 1^st quarter of the financial year of 2021/2022 amounted to 14.32 million euros, an increase by 12.8% compared to the same period a year ago (1Q 2020/2021: 12.7 million euros), including sales increase in wholesale by 63.3% and in HoReCa by 16.8%.

The sales of fresh fish and fillets’ product and smoked products increased by 30.7% and 11.6% respectively compared to the first quarter of the previous year. Compared to the previous quarter i.e. the 4^th quarter of the previous financial year, the sales decreased by 2.85%, (4Q 2020/2021: 14.74 million euros), with retail and wholesale sectors declining by 8.8% and 8.3% respectively, whereas sales in HoReCa sector increased by 10.6%.

Indrek Kasela, CEO, PRFoods, said:

“As the acute corona crisis is subduing, we have entered the period characterised by inflation, resumed and increased demand and drastic rise in raw material prices. Energy prices have not had significant impact on PRFoods, considering for example that John Ross Jr used traditional closed wood chip burning kilns, we can say that we are pioneers in CO2 neutral smoking of fish.

“More expensive raw material supports significantly our own fish farming. At the same time we must remember that price increases will happen only in next year in Finland, as most contracts are priced until end of the year already. Therefore last quarter was marked by high raw material prices and sale prices remained stagnant. We have significantly increased sales prices in all of our client groups. Most certainly the price increases will be passed on to end customers. With high probability the high fish prices will remain throughout of 2022 and therefore we can say that we resume our normal rhythm of operations. Restructuring of Finnish operations is continuing as planned, bringing about transfer of significant portion of production to Estonia and the number of employees in Finland is cut drastically. One-off expensed related to this will occur in this quarter.

“Sales in UK and Estonia grew as expected. We have reduced production in products that are still loss-making. Decrease in Estonian sales is related to the fact that Estonia inbound tourism is still not functioning, as Estonian government has repeatedly managed to be first among countries lagging behind in dealing with corona, thus negative affecting HoReCa sector.“

In the first quarter of the financial year, the sales increased in fresh fish and fillets’ product and smoked products product groups compared to the first quarter of the previous financial year. The sales of fresh fish and fillets’ product group that formed 37.4% of the product portfolio (1Q 2020/2021: 32.3%) sales increased by 30.7% compared to the first quarter of the previous financial year. The sales of smoked products that accounted for about half of the total sales (1Q 2020/2021: 49.6%) increased by 11.6% over the financial years.