Refresco Gerber has fallen to a €15.3m (£11m) loss in its first quarter thanks to costs related to its Dutch flotation in March.
The European bottler of soft drinks and fruit juices, which has just signed a major deal with Tesco, was hit with a one-off charge of €20m for its IPO, widening the loss from €1.9m in the first quarter of 2014.
On an operating level, a loss of €3.3m was recorded for the first three months of 2015, compared to profits of €9.9m a year ago. However, when the costs were stripped out, EBITDA improved from €31.7m to €37.1m.
Refresco floated its shares on Amsterdam’s stock exchange on 27 March for €14.50 each, valuing the group at the top of the range at €1.2bn and raising €548m in the process. The group said today that it ended the first quarter in a “strong” cash position amounting to €201.9m, including the proceeds from issuing new shares in the IPO.
Revenue fell marginally from €459m to €458.2m in the period as volumes climbed 1.8% to 1.38 billion litres - which it said was a slight outperformance of the market. CEO Hans Roelofs added that the first effects of passing lower input costs to customers was already showing at the end of the first quarter.
“In the first quarter of 2015 we reported results in line with our expectations while we also concluded our search for a new capital structure and successfully listed Refresco Gerber on Euronext Amsterdam,” Roelofs said. ”At the beginning of our second year of integrating Refresco and Gerber Emig, progress is well underway, resulting in scale and efficiency synergies, cost advantages and commercial opportunities which for the most part will benefit our business throughout 2015.”
Roelofs added that softening of the retail market in the UK resulted in lower volumes and although revenue per litre improved, this was impacted by some currency effects leading to a revenue decrease. Volume sales in the UK fell from 153.9m litres in the three months to the end of March to 144.1m litres. UK revenue fell from €86.9m to €84.8m.
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