Kerry Group Half-Year Report 2024
Edmond Scanlon, Chief Executive Officer: “We are pleased to report a good performance across the first half of the year. Taste & Nutrition delivered good volume growth ahead of our end markets, with strong profit growth and margin expansion across the business, contributing to our earnings per share growth of 9.1% in the period.
Taste & Nutrition volume growth was led by strong performances in the foodservice channel across all three regions, as we continue to support established foodservice chains evolve and develop their businesses, while working with emerging leaders to upscale their operations and offerings. Volume growth in the retail channel was driven by good performances in the Americas and APMEA, led by very strong growth in Snack applications with Kerry’s leading range of savoury taste profiles and Tastesense® salt-reduction technologies.
From a capital allocation perspective, we continued to invest to support the organic development of our business, while also completing the Lactase enzymes business acquisition and progressing our share repurchase activity through the period.
Given the strength of our financial performance and our innovation pipeline, today we are updating our full year constant currency adjusted earnings per share guidance to 7% to 10%.”
Highlights
- Group revenue of €3.9bn
- Taste & Nutrition volume growth of 3.1% (Q2: +3.2%) | Group volumes +1.7% (Q2: +1.5%)
- Taste & Nutrition EBITDA margin +130bps | Group +160bps
- Dairy Ireland EBITDA of €35m (H1 2023: €29m)
- Group EBITDA of €552m (H1 2023: €518m)
- Adjusted EPS of 194.1 cent, up 9.1% on a constant currency basis (7.8% reported currency growth)
- Free cash flow of €445m reflecting 131% cash conversion
- Interim dividend per share increase of 10.1% to 38.1 cent
- Share repurchases of €279m in H1 | Intention to initiate a further program
- Full year constant currency adjusted EPS guidance range of 7% to 10%
