HKFoods: Denmark divestment to take place during October

Translation: Original published in Finnish on 10/18/2024 at 7:29 am EEST.

HKFoods and Plukon Food Group, the buyer of the company’s Danish businesses, announced this week that the Danish competition authority has approved the transaction. The approval of the competition authority was expected as there was no significant overlap between the divested business and the buyer. According to the companies, the sale of the business will be completed by the end of October. We have already included the divestment in our forecasts, so there is no need for any revisions as a result of the approval.

The sale of the Danish operations follows HKFoods' previous divestments of foreign operations, such as Sweden and the Baltic countries, and is part of the company's strategic shift to focus primarily on its Finnish operations. The divestments will allow the company to strengthen its balance sheet and focus its investments to Finland, which should support the profitability of its Finnish operations. There have already been significant positive signs that the profitability of the Finnish operations will improve in 2023-24. The profitability of the Danish operations was low, so the unencumbered purchase price of 44.6 MEUR can be considered good for the shareholders of HKFoods. However, the sale price is significantly lower than the price at which HKFoods acquired the business in 2010 (an unencumbered sale price of 71 MEUR). HKFoods' total adjusted EBIT from Denmark in 2011-23 was -34 MEUR.