Sto SE & Co. KGaA (0G5B) Q1 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Christian Schmalzer. Please go ahead, sir. Dear ladies and gentlemen, panelists, let me welcome you to our call on our Q1 2024 results. I will start into our presentation with a brief overview of the key figures for the first three months, followed by comments on strategic topics we want to highlight and what trends and developments we see at the moment. Henning will then comment on the developments and effects of our Q1 figures in more detail. This will be followed by comments on what we expect for the second quarter and the rest of the year. As always, we are looking forward to your questions after our presentation. With that, let us start the call with a short overview of Q1 2024. In our comments on our prelims, we had already indicated that the strong developments at the end of last year should continue in the first quarter, particularly in the out of home segment. We were able to increase sales from 410 million to 453 million euro, an increase of 11%. Organic growth for the same period was 9%. At the same time, adjusted EBITDA increased slightly better than sales at 12%. In addition to easing cost pressure and declining inflation, this was due to the substantial positive development of our core out-of-home segment. As already commented in our outlook, we expect an almost stable IFRS 16 effect and almost stable depreciation and amortization for the financial year. As consequence, adjusted EBIT will increase significantly stronger compared with adjusted EBITDA. Corresponding effect can be clearly seen in the past quarter and adjusted EBIT growth of 33% to around 35 million euros speaks for itself. We had a strong focus on cost management in the last 18 mont...