Bakkavör, the Iceland-based fresh prepared food company, has reported a loss of £154.2m (€166.3m) in its full year results for 2008, down on the previous year's profit of £47.4m (€51.1m). Results were hit by a poor fourth quarter which saw a loss of £98.5m (€106.2m), falling from a profit of £10.4m (€11.2m) in 2007.
Profit was impacted heavily by one-off costs totalling £177m (€190.9m), including a loss on the group's Greencore investment, restructuring costs, mark-to-market losses on interest rate swaps and foreign currency loans, and deferred taxation.
Turnover for the year hit £1.6bn (€1.72bn), up 10 per cent, with underlying like-for-like sales growth of 1.9 per cent and EBITDA pre-restructuring costs of £108.5m (€117m, down 27 per cent).
'In what are difficult operating conditions for many companies, we have secured funding across all of our operating businesses, strengthened our trading operations and maintained our sales performance despite the slowdown in consumer spend,' said group CEO ágúst Gudmundsson.
He added that it had successfully retrieved £144m of its £150m cash deposit from New Kaupthing, and that it hoped to retrieve the remainder by mid-April.
'Going forward, we expect the trading conditions to remain challenging, however due to the actions we have already taken and the continued focus on our business priorities we believe the group is well placed to manage ongoing trading pressures as well as adapting to current and future consumer demand,' Mr Gudmundsson added. 'As such, we anticipate returning to profit and good cash generation in 2009.'
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