First Nine Months 2022 Trading Update

Smurfit Kappa Group plc (‘SKG’, 'Smurfit Kappa' or ‘the Group’) today announced a trading update for the 9 months to 30 September 2022.

Key points:

• Revenue growth of 33% to €9,724 million
• EBITDA growth of 43% to €1,767 million with an EBITDA margin of 18.2%
• Net Debt to EBITDA ratio below 1.4x
• ROCE of 20.6%
• Ongoing capital investment to support customers and to optimise SKG’s system

Tony Smurfit, Group CEO, commented:

“SKG has delivered a very strong performance in the first nine months with revenue growth of 33%, EBITDA of €1,767 million and an EBITDA margin of 18.2%. We continue to drive improvement across all areas of our business, consistent with the delivery of our strategy, providing the most innovative and sustainable packaging through our integrated business model, ensuring security of supply to our over 65,000 customers.

“Significant cost inflation is being recovered in corrugated box pricing as anticipated. Against strong comparisons, corrugated box volumes were flat for the first nine months.

“The investments we have made over the last number of years are making the Group ever more efficient with a customer-led focus on quality, innovation and sustainability. With SKG's scale and geographic reach across 36 countries, together with the many specialist businesses within the Group, there remain many opportunities for growth.

“Our results reflect the steps we have taken and the quality of the Smurfit Kappa business. We expect to deliver EBITDA of approximately €2.3 billion for the full year 2022.”

Download Q3 2022 Press Release

 

First Nine Months 2022 - Conference Call

The Group’s management team will today host a conference call for analysts and institutional investors at 08.00 GMT (04.00 EDT).

To access the conference call details, please register via the link below:

ACCESS CONFERENCE CALL DETAILS

 

Forward Looking Statements

This Announcement contains certain statements that are forward-looking. Forward-looking statements are prospective in nature and are not based on historical facts, but rather on current expectations of the Group about future events, and involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future. Although the Group believes that current expectations and assumptions with respect to these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that these expectations will prove to be correct. There are a number of factors that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements should therefore be construed in the light of such factors. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. Other than in accordance with legal or regulatory obligations, the Group is not under any obligation, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. The forward-looking statements in this document do not constitute reports or statements published in compliance with any of Regulations 6 to 8 of the Transparency (Directive 2004/109/EC) Regulations 2007.