Tessenderlo Group NV reported an Agro segment adjusted EBITDA of €173.4 million (approximately $187.3 million at current exchange rates), when excluding the foreign exchange effect, for the 12 months to Dec. 31, 2022, up 7.4% from the year-ago €147.4 million.
First-half 2022 adjusted EBITDA increased by 50%, with the company citing favorable market circumstances within Crop Vitality, Tessenderlo Kerley International and NovaSource.
However, lower sales volumes, cost increases that were fully reflected in the cost of goods sold, as well as inventory write-offs (€-7 million), led to a 37% lower second-half 2022 adjusted EBITDA of €51.8 million compared with the year-ago €72.3 million.
It noted an increase of the NovaSource adjusted EBITDA was more than offset by the decrease of Crop Vitality and Tessenderlo Kerley International.
Agro reported a 23% increase in 2022 revenue to €974.5 million, when excluding the foreign exchange effect, up from €749.3 million the previous year. The company attributed the higher revenue to an increase of sales prices, implemented in 2021 and first-half 2022 to compensate the high raw material, energy, and transport costs.
Second-half revenue only increased by 7%, to €428.6 million from €375.6 million as the second-half of the prior period (2H 2021) was already impacted by higher sales prices, while these historical high prices also negatively impacted demand, Tessenderlo noted.
However, Agro’s full-year 2022 revenue was positively impacted by the organic agricultural solutions revenue contributed by the business unit Violleau, which from 2022 has been included in the Agro segment. However, Tessenderlo said the Violleau unit’s contribution to the results is not considered to be significant.
Company-wide, Tessenderlo reported a 16.1% increase (when excluding the foreign exchange effect) in full-year adjusted EBITDA to €434.8 million on revenue of €2.59 billion, up from the year-ago €354.2 million and €2.08 billion, respectively.
The company posted an 18% increase in total comprehensive income for the year to €268.4 million, up from the year-ago €227.8 million.
Looking ahead, Tessenderlo anticipates a continued high level of economic uncertainty in 2023, putting the development of customer demand and sales margin under more pressure.
Based on currently available information, the company said it expects that FY2023 adjusted EBITDA will be lower than the 2022 pro forma adjusted EBITDA of €467 million.
The latter is the sum of the Tessenderlo Group 2022 adjusted EBITDA (€434.8 million) and the 2022 Picanol Group (Machines and Technologies segment) adjusted EBITDA (€32.2 million).
Tessenderlo said an anticipated increase in the Picanol Group adjusted EBITDA is expected to be more than offset by a decrease of the adjusted EBITDA of the other segments.
Picanol Group NV, Ypres (Ieper) became a business unit of Tessenderlo’s Machines & Technologies segment with effect from Jan. 1, 2023, after Tessenderlo secured 100% of the shares of Picanol. The two companies agreed last July to combine companies into one industrial group, eventually having one stock exchange listing and one Board of Directors (GM July 15, 2022).
The integrated group thus consists of the following five business segments: Agro, Bio-valorization, Industrial Solutions, Machines & Technologies, and T-Power.