Corbion: full year 2023 results

Corbion, the Amsterdam-listed sustainable ingredients company that champions preservation through application of science, today publishes its results for the year ending 31 December 2023.

Key highlights annual results 2023:

• Sales € 1,443.8 million; an organic increase of 1.2%
• Adjusted EBITDA € 191.8 million; an organic increase of 10.3%
• Operating profit € 117.2 million; an organic increase of 20.8%
• Organic growth core activities: Sales 3.0% & Adjusted EBITDA 16.2%
• Q4 2023:
  • Sales € 352.8 million and Adjusted EBITDA € 49.0 million
  • Organic growth core activities: Sales -0.5% & Adjusted EBITDA 29.3%
• Free Cash Flow full year € 18.6 million
• Covenant net debt/covenant EBITDA improved to 3.1x at year-end
• Proposed regular cash dividend of € 0.61 per share, an increase of 9% versus prior year reflecting the positive free cash flow momentum
• World leading lactic acid plant in Thailand mechanical completed in December 2023 according to schedule
• Divestment of Emulsifiers announced, completion anticipated in Q2 2024

Commenting on today’s results, Olivier Rigaud, CEO, stated:

"I am pleased to report a 2023 full year outcome in line with what we indicated earlier. We have reported organic sales growth and double-digit organic growth in Adjusted EBITDA and Operating Profit, whilst facing a challenging geopolitical and macro-economic environment. We delivered a higher than anticipated positive free cash flow for the year due to our focus on operational efficiencies, optimizing working capital and capex discipline. As a result, we propose to increase the regular cash dividend to our shareholders with 9% to € 0.61 per share.

In Sustainable Food Solutions, sales growth was driven by pricing. We observed strong growth in our product/market adjacencies like dairy stabilizers, natural anti-oxidants and natural mold inhibitors. In Q4, we saw a continuation of the upward momentum in volume/mix growth reflecting the end of destocking.

In Lactic Acid & Specialties, we experienced lower lactic acid supply to the TotalEnergies Corbion joint venture as well as an ongoing market slowdown in semiconductors and agrochemicals. Biomedical polymers continued its double digit growth trajectory.

Algae Ingredients continued their growth momentum as a sustainable alternative to fish oil in the aquaculture industry, and concurrently we expanded our product portfolio and pipeline of high-margin products for the petfood and human nutrition segments. In 2023, the sales has grown over 50%, surpassing the € 100 million landmark.

We achieved the mechanical completion of our world leading lactic acid plant in December and are on track to commence the start-up phase after commissioning is completed near the end of the first quarter of 2024. In January 2024, we announced that we had entered into a binding agreement for the divestment of the Emulsifier business allowing Corbion to sharpen its focus on fermentation based technologies”.

Attachment

• 20240301 Press release 4Q23_FINAL