Breville shares have taken a nosedive falling 13% after the global appliance business delivered a profit lower than what was predicted.
Revenue came in at $905.8M up from $888M in the last quarter while gross profit came in at $332M up from $311.3M.
While revenues climbed 2% gross profit was only up 6.7% with investors taking the stock down after the traditionally high-growth stock suffered sales falls in two out of its three geographical regions and profit undershot analyst forecasts.
Breville’s poorer profit performance was also in stark contrast to more upbeat recent results from global rivals such as De’Longhi.
Last month De’Longhi hailed the performance of its coffee division and an improved outlook in Europe when they posted a 10.6% fall in half-year revenues to $1.42bn.
However, net profit increased 15% to Euro 82.7m with an increased margin of 6.4%, as a result of price increases and cost management.
While this appealed to the market Breville was seen as being in a more difficult space as consumers cut investments in appliances.
Breville chief executive Jim Clayton was positive of the result claiming “A solid half of performance for the Group delivering 8.2% EBIT growth against a subdued consumer backdrop.
“Savings in input costs were partially reinvested into promotion and price, but only where ROIs supported the investment, driving gross margin improvements across the Group”.
“We enter 2H24 in a solid position with our NPD pipeline continuing to release, new markets maturing, our solutions offering developing, and cost pressures well managed. We expect to deliver EBIT growth of 5.0% to 7.5% for FY244″.
Breville, whose largest shareholder is billionaire Solomon Lew with a stake of 30 per cent spread across his personal interests and his listed company Premier Investments is one of the few Australian appliance Companies operating globally”.
Sales fell in most of its regions. In the Americas, sales slipped 0.1 per cent to $450.3m, while sales in the Asia Pacific fell 5.7 per cent to $155.4m.
In Europe where they compete up against De’Longhi, sales rose 5.5 per cent to $177.2m.
In Australia, the business experienced a weaker first quarter, followed by a stronger second quarter, beginning with Black Friday.
E&P Financial analyst Olivier Coulon said it was a slightly lower than anticipated profit despite a strong pre-tax earnings result.
“Composition less favourable than expected on weaker sales and better cost control. While any (market) consensus revisions are likely to be only modestly negative at EBIT, we think the reaction today is likely to be quite negative given poorer than expected composition of results. We expect the stock to underperform.”
Jarden analyst Ben Gilbert told the Australian that overall, it was a “good earnings result” albeit with questions hanging over its revenue performance and expectations of improvements into the second half.
