Apetit Q1'26 preview: Profit warning was essentially due to one-off items

Translation: Original published in Finnish on 4/17/2026 at 8:19 am EEST.

Apetit publishes its Q1 results on Friday, April 24, at around 8:30 am EEST. We expect the company's revenue to have grown, driven by an acquisition, but we also expect EBIT to have fallen from the comparison period owing to the unprofitability of Foodhills. After the company issued a technical profit warning yesterday related to the closure of the Pudasjärvi frozen pizza factory, we lowered our reported earnings estimates for the current year. Our operational estimates thus remain unchanged, so we reiterate our Reduce recommendation and EUR 13.0 target price.

Shutting down frozen pizza factory a strategically justified move

Apetit announced that it will close its frozen pizza factory in Pudasjärvi and transition to contract manufacturing by the end of 2026. Consequently, the jobs of 21 permanently employed persons at the factory will end. This arrangement allows Apetit to avoid one-off investments of around 3 MEUR in the coming years. Additionally, the company aims to save around 0.7 MEUR annually starting next year. Although the factory's closure will result in approximately 2.3 MEUR in one-off costs and write-downs in 2026, we consider outsourcing this weakly profitable, capital-intensive production to be a justified move. This frees up both capital and management resources for other business areas in which the company has a stronger competitive position. However, we are awaiting further information on how contract manufacturing will affect profitability in the coming years.

We expect Q1 result to weaken year-on-year

We estimate Apetit's revenue to increase by 10% to 48.2 MEUR in Q1. This growth is largely due to the Foodhills acquisition, as we estimate moderate organic growth of 1%. For Food Solutions, we estimate around 3% organic growth, which we believe will be driven by volume. In Oilseed Products, we estimate a 1% decrease in revenue, reflecting moderate market price development and stable milling volumes relative to the comparison period’ strong levels.

Instead, we expect Q1 EBIT to have decreased to 1.8 MEUR (Q1’25: 2.3 MEUR). In Oilseed Products, we estimate earnings to have increased to 1.1 MEUR due to balanced raw material prices and the company's own bottling line. In Food Solutions, however, we estimate that EBIT from the old businesses weakened to 1.5 MEUR from a strong comparison period, in addition to which we expect a 0.6 MEUR loss from Foodhills. Nevertheless, we estimate that EPS will strengthen to EUR 0.16 due to improved earnings at Sucros.

Decreased guidance indicates one-off items

Apetit also lowered its profit guidance for 2026 and now expects the operating result to clearly decrease year-on-year (2025: 5.9 MEUR excluding the non-recurring impact of the Foodhills acquisition). In our view, however, the profit warning is related to the one-off effects of closing the frozen pizza factory. We have factored one-off costs and write-downs into our Q2 forecasts, which has caused our reported earnings forecast for 2026 to decline by approximately 45%. In our estimates, the adjusted EBIT of the old businesses (i.e., excluding non-recurring items) will be 7.5 MEUR, but Foodhills' operating loss of 2.4 MEUR weighs on the total adjusted EBIT, bringing it to 5.1 MEUR. We also slightly decreased our investment and depreciation estimates for the coming years due to the reduction in investment needs reported by the company.

Valuation is not attractive, and there is uncertainty surrounding the turnaround

Apetit's share valuation is high on an earnings basis with our 2026 estimates (EV/EBIT: 17x, P/E: 21x) due to, e.g., the unprofitability of the acquired Foodhills. If Foodhills' EBITDA turned positive, as we have assumed in our 2027 estimates, the valuation could decrease closer to a fair level (EV/EBIT: 12x). However, even this valuation level would not be very affordable in our opinion but would require a clearly upward earnings development over a longer period. Visibility into Foodhills' earnings turnaround is dim, considering the company's prolonged unprofitability and the challenges typically associated with international acquisitions. For this reason, we believe the stock's risk/reward ratio is weak.