BioMar's Aquaculture Technology Centre at Hirtshals, Denmark.
Photo: BioMar.
Aquaculture feed specialist BioMar has reported its "best results ever" for the fourth quarter of 2024, and achieved a significant overall increase in profits in 2024, despite lower volumes and revenue compared with the previous year's performance.
The BioMar Group as a whole managed to improve its EBITDA by 18% across its consolidated companies during 2024.
“It is with great satisfaction that we look back at 2024. We have driven a meticulous focus on building a strong business, and the increase in profitability is the result of an unwavering strategic focus on optimising our product portfolio, combined with a series of operational excellence measures," said BioMar Group CEO, Carlos Diaz, in a press release announcing the results.
"The improvement was broadly based across divisions and business units and reflects our continuous efforts on products, performance and efficiencies in our factories and supply chain”, Diaz added.
Despite the increased earnings, volumes for BioMar's consolidated companies decreased by 5% to 1,372 million tonnes in 2024.
Diaz said that this lower volume "should be seen in the light of our commercial excellence efforts where we deliberately steer away from contracts with less potential for mutual beneficial partnership on advanced feed solutions and from sales to high-risk customers."
"In other words, we prioritise building long-term value together with our customers over transactional relations, volume and market share," Diaz stated.
The BioMar CEO added that the volumes were impacted by several factors, particularly "biological conditions" in Norway and Chile, in addition to energy shortages in Ecuador.
In 2024, BioMar saw revenue decline by 7% to DKK 16.6 billion (EUR 2.23bn / USD 2.47bn), which Diaz said was a reflection of lower volume and lower raw material prices during the year.
“On top of the results from the consolidated companies, it is worth bringing attention to the fact that our feed production joint ventures in China and Turkey did well again in 2024 and reported a combined non-consolidated revenue of DKK 1,502 million (EUR 202m / USD 224m) and an EBITDA of DKK 166 million (EUR 22.3m / USD 24.8m) (100% basis)," Diaz said.
BioMar stated it expects to generate full-year 2025 revenue of around DKK 16-17 billion (EUR 2.15-2.28bn / USD 2.38-2.53bn), but notes that changing market conditions and volatile prices of raw materials may impact this forecast.
Based on the current outlook, the company said it expects its EBITDA in 2025 to be in the range of DKK 1.47-1.57 billion (EUR 197-211m / USD 219-234m).
In November, it emerged that BioMar's owners Schouw & Co., a prominent Danish industrial investment company, were considering a possible separate stock market listing for BioMar. BioMar is currently Schouw & Co.’s largest holding and contributes almost 50% of the Group’s overall revenue and EBITDA.
The move could pave the way for BioMar’s debut as a publicly traded company. However, Schouw & Co. indicated that if it decides to go ahead with an initial public offering, this would take place during the second half of 2025 at the earliest.
