Altri profits up 23% in 2022 to €152.1M

  • Lusa
  • 23 March 2023

The company highlighted that it was the first time that sales exceeded the €1 billion threshold.

Altri recorded net results from continuing operations of €152.1 million in 2022, a 23% increase year-on-year, the group said in a statement on Thursday.

“The financial performance of the Altri group was influenced by the volume of fibre production, the evolution of sales, but mainly by the rise in prices on international markets,” the company said, adding that “total revenues, which include other income, reached €1.07 billion, a growth of 34.4% compared to 2021.”

The company highlighted that it was the first time that sales exceeded the €1 billion threshold.

On the other hand, EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) was €301.4 million in 2022, “an increase of 32.4% compared to 2021” and recording “an EBITDA margin of 28.3%, which translates into a reduction of 0.4 p.p. [percentage points] compared to the same period last year, despite the strong inflation of the various variable costs experienced during the past year,” it said.

Altri, through Caima, Celbi and Biotek, “produced a record total volume of cellulose fibres of 1.14 million tonnes, 1.5% above the previous year”.

According to the Group, the total volume of pulp produced in the fourth quarter reached 290,000 tonnes, “11.8% above the same quarter and in line with the previous quarter, despite the programmed stoppage that occurred in Caima”.

In the last quarter of last year, the net result of Altri’s continued operations “reached about €34.7 million, a year-on-year growth of 4.3%”, and “this more moderate evolution of the result is explained by the negative evolution of exchange rate hedges, as well as the increase of the effective tax rate in the quarter, factors that were, nevertheless, compensated on the operational side”, said the company.

In the same period, EBITDA reached €78.1 million euros, an increase of 57.3% compared to the same quarter last year, the company said.

Last year, Altri increased investment by 73.5%. “After the €26.1 million invested in 2021, the total net investment made in 2022 was €45.3 million, including about €10.3 million from the new biomass boiler for Caima’s industrial unit,” it said, also revealing that “total net investment in the fourth quarter reached €10.5 million”.

According to Altri, “despite the greater investment to maximise the efficiency of operations, and the dividends delivered to shareholders, including the 37.2% of Greenvolt’s capital, the group’s net debt” fell.

The net debt was €325.8 million at the end of 2022, down from €344.0 million at the end of 2021.

In its outlook for this year, Altri said that “the global cellulose fibre market is in a process of normalisation”, noting that “after a fairly strong performance in 2022, Europe showed some slowdown towards the end of the year and in early 2023”.

On the other hand, “China, after successive and prolonged periods of confinement, relaxed restrictive measures during the last quarter of 2002,” the company said, and the group believes “that the reopening of the Chinese economy could have a significant impact on global demand for pulp from the second quarter of 2023.

Altri also noted that, in terms of supply, and “with greater normalisation of global logistics”, many of the “restrictions to supply parts of the globe in recent years, are overcome” and that, therefore, “some positive reaction from the Chinese market may be supplied by the market in America and will help to absorb much of the capacity of the new projects, based in Latin America, which may begin to arrive in the market during the second half of 2023.

After an “extremely challenging year trying to minimise the effect of widespread variable cost inflation, we started to see some price stabilisation in the fourth quarter of 2022 and early 2023,” the company added.

For Altri, “the main factors for the relevant increase in production cost were the evolution of the price of natural gas and electricity, the price of chemicals and the cost of wood, due to the higher level of imports and the evolution of the dollar”.

Finally, in relation to the Gama project in Galicia, the group “continues to work with the aim of announcing the final investment decision regarding the construction of a greenfield industrial unit, with an annual production capacity of 200,000 tonnes of soluble pulp and sustainable textile fibres”, and is making progress on the environmental impact study, engineering project, economic feasibility, financing structure and access to European Union funds, it said.