Apetit: Profit warning due to poor pea harvest
Summary
- Apetit issued a profit warning due to a poor pea harvest in Sweden, expecting its operating profit for the current year to be between -2.0 and +1.0 MEUR, potentially turning negative.
- The challenging weather conditions in Sweden have led to lower-than-anticipated pea yields, impacting production volumes and profitability for the rest of the year.
- The company's recent expansion into Sweden with the acquisition of Foodhills has faced greater losses than expected, delaying the anticipated earnings turnaround.
- While the profit warning aligns with the current year's EBIT estimates, it introduces uncertainty for medium-term forecasts, particularly regarding the Swedish pea business's ability to turn EBITDA-positive by 2027.
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Translation: Original published in Finnish on 8/13/2026 at 9:10 am EEST.
Apetit issued a profit warning on Wednesday evening, lowering its guidance for the current year and now expects its operating profit to turn negative or, at best, remain only marginally positive. This is due to a poor frozen pea harvest in Sweden's contract farming areas, which will weigh on production volumes and profitability during the rest of the year. Our reported EBIT estimate is in line with the company's new guidance, so the profit warning does not necessarily require changes to our current year estimates. However, operational challenges create uncertainty regarding the realization of the forecast earnings turnaround in the coming years and may thus put downward pressure on medium-term estimates. We will review our longer-term estimates in connection with the Q2 report.
Extreme weather phenomena weakened pea harvest in Sweden
The profit warning is due to challenging weather conditions in Sweden's contract farming areas. Due to hot weather and drought, frozen pea yields have been lower than anticipated, and more fields than expected have had to be left unharvested. A weak harvest will decrease production volumes and weaken the company's profitability in the second half of the year. Apetit recently expanded into the Swedish market by acquiring Foodhills, whose turnaround has been one of the key drivers of earnings development in the coming years. Operations in Sweden already incurred greater losses than we expected in the early part of the year, and the failure of the pea harvest may delay the turnaround in earnings for the next 12 months.
This year's earnings will fall to around zero or turn into a loss
According to the updated guidance, Apetit estimates the Group's operating profit for 2026 to be -2.0 to +1.0 MEUR. Previously, the company expected EBIT to decline significantly from the comparison year's 5.9 MEUR (excluding non-recurring items from the Foodhills acquisition). Before the profit warning, we expected the current year's adjusted EBIT to be 1.6 MEUR and reported EBIT to be -0.7 MEUR. The guidance only refers to the Group's operating profit, so we assume it refers to the reported EBIT, for which our forecast is in line with the new guidance. The adjusted EBIT, in turn, has been corrected for a one-off cost related to the closure of the Pudasjärvi pizza factory.
Although the profit warning would not cause downward pressure on the 2026 forecasts, the earnings forecasts for the coming years, which are clearly stronger than the current level, now appear more uncertain than before. We have forecast the Swedish pea business to turn EBITDA-positive during 2027, but this may be challenging if not enough peas are harvested from the current season. We estimate the pea business to incur a loss of 1-3 MEUR at the EBITDA level this year, in addition to which the business's depreciations are a 1.6 MEUR/year.