Kri-Kri Q1 2025
Serres’ finest dairy producer started 2025 at a sprint. Turnover hit €66.4 m, +26 % y/y, pushing EBITDA to €10.5 m (+6 %) and net profit to €7.25 m (+6 %) even after a chunky raw-milk cost step-up. That’s the fifth straight record first-quarter top line and leaves management hand-waving a full-year “double-digit” sales goal that suddenly looks conservative.
Yogurt is the jet engine. Segment revenue jumped +25 % in value and +24 % in volume, with exports up a blistering +39 %—now almost 70 % of total yogurt sales—as the U.K. (+54 %) and Italy (+18 %) keep discovering that Greek yogurt tastes better when it actually comes from Greece. At home, shoppers continue to trade down to private-label tubs—private label owns 37.5 % of the aisle—so Kri-Kri’s branded share in Greece slipped to 13.4 %. Management doesn’t love the slide, but the export math more than offsets it for now.
Ice-cream season hasn’t started—yet. Domestic Q1 ice-cream sales were a modest €3.9 m (+7 %)—nice, but nobody buys cones in February. The real test comes when the beaches fill and tourist arrivals (and the company’s new frozen-yogurt line in the U.S.) kick in from Q2 onward.
Cash is being redeployed, not hoarded. Cap-ex under the three-year “Greek Yogurt Dynamo” €52 m upgrade planhit €4.5 m this quarter, targeting more yogurt and ice-cream capacity plus efficiency tweaks. Full-year spend is pegged at €21–25 m. Meanwhile the share-buy-back authorised last summer rolled on—another €0.43 m of stock repurchased in Q1—leaving treasury shares at roughly 1 % of outstanding.
Balance-sheet still squeaky-clean. Net cash sits near €5 m, solvency ratio north of 70 %, and inventories up as the firm builds raw-milk buffers ahead of peak demand. Working-capital swings pushed operating cash flow negative this quarter, but seasonality means that will flip quickly once ice-cream sales thaw.
Take-away: Kri-Kri isn’t just keeping pace with Europe’s Greek-yogurt craze—it’s drafting it. Exports are offsetting domestic private-label pressure, margins are inching higher despite milk inflation, and management is ploughing cash into new vats and freezers while quietly shrinking the float. If summer tourists eat as much gelato as the Brits are spooning yogurt, FY ’25 may wind up better than the mid-teens guidance baked into current sell-side models.
Quelle: substack.com/@krokerequityresearch/note/c-118462186?r=5o3rew
