Anora Q4'24 preview: Earnings risk more to the upside

Translation: Original published in Finnish on 02/10/2025 at 6:47 am EET

Anora will report its Q4 earnings on Wednesday, around 8.30 am EET. The company's 2024 adjusted EBITDA guidance is 65-70 MEUR. With our estimate being at the low end of the guidance, the risk for the Q4 result is mainly to the upside. Due to the weak result, we expect the dividend to decrease. Regarding the outlook, we expect a slight improvement in earnings this year.

Revenue is expected to decrease due to the volume decline in the market

We predict that Anora's Q4 revenue will decrease by 4% year-on-year. The decrease in revenue is mainly due to beverage sales (-5%). This is still affected by the declining market volumes in Finland and Norway, while the Swedish market is growing slightly. The forecast is also in line with the comments given by Anora in connection with its Q3 results, i.e., the development would be negative, but less so than in Q3 (-6%).

We expect the result to fall slightly from the comparison period

Anora's 2024 adjusted EBITDA guidance is 65-70 MEUR. Our forecast for the full year is at the lower end of the guidance, i.e. 65 MEUR, which for Q4 means 26 MEUR. This is slightly weaker than the comparison period. However, if the result ends up closer to the upper end of the full-year guidance, the Q4 result may also improve. Anora's result is supported by the improved profitability of the Industrial segment from a weak comparison period and wine price increases, while decreased volumes have a negative impact.

We expect a falling dividend and a subdued outlook for this year

Due to the weak result and relatively leveraged balance sheet, we expect Anora to lower its dividend to EUR 0.15 from EUR 0.22 for 2022-23. We expect Anora’s revenue in 2025 to remain at the level of the comparison period and EBITDA to improve slightly to 69 MEUR. We believe the company's development will be hampered, at least in H1, by a continuing decline in the market. On the other hand, we believe the company has limited opportunities to push fixed costs down, as creating growth requires increasing fixed costs, e.g., in marketing. The company is in the midst of a management transition as the current CEO has announced his retirement, but no new CEO has been announced.