Atria announces amendment to its full-year result forecast

Atria Plc  COMPANY ANNOUNCEMENT  13 June 2011, 4:15 pm


Atria announces amendment to its full-year result forecast

Atria Plc hereby announces an amendment to its 2011 EBIT forecast. The company expects the full-year EBIT to be significantly lower than the 2010 EBIT excluding non-recurring items (EUR 21.6 million). The company’s net sales forecast remains unchanged.

According to Atria’s earlier forecast, “Atria Group's net sales are expected to grow somewhat in 2011. Growth in net sales will, however, be weighed down by the difficult market situation in Russia and the discontinuation of the production of consumer-packed meat in Sweden. The Group’s EBIT excluding non-recurring costs stood at EUR 21.6 million in 2010. In 2011, the Group’s EBIT is expected to be higher than this. The key sources for uncertainty in terms of earnings development are the rising prices of cereals, feed and other raw materials and the difficult market situation in Russia.”

The reason for amending the forecast is Atria Finland’s unexpectedly weak performance, which is due to the sharp rise in the prices of key raw materials in meat production, as well as the market situation of pork remaining difficult. To maintain good operating conditions for domestic meat production and to ensure raw material procurement in the future, the producer prices that Atria Finland paid were 7 per cent higher on average than in the same period in the previous year, taking into account all types of meat. Sales price increases have not been able to implement.

Atria has launched measures to improve profitability in various business areas in 2010 and 2011. These measures will generate total cost savings of EUR 17 million. The cost savings will be realised mainly during 2011 and 2012.

Atria will publish its second quarter interim report on 28 July 2011 at 8:00 am.

For more information, please contact Juha Gröhn, CEO, Atria Plc, tel. +358 400 684 224.

ATRIA PLC
Juha Gröhn
CEO

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Nasdaq OMX Helsinki Ltd
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www.atriagroup.com