Atria: Weak Q4 with a soft guidance for 2024 - Nordea

Atria reported Q4 EBIT of EUR 9.4m, 43% (EUR 7.1m) below LSEG Data & Analytics consensus. Q4 net sales of EUR 438m were down 3% y/y and came 2% below consensus. Q4 EBIT miss was driven by Finland, where sales declined in all channels owing to reduced consumer demand. New poultry unit in Nurmo is now fully operational, clearly ahead of our initial thoughts. Denmark & Estonia beat our estimate slightly, while Sweden EBIT remained on the negative territory and missed our estimate. There were EUR 49.2m of items affecting comparability in Q4 of which EUR 40m related to impairments in Sweden and Denmark & Estonia. Operating cash flow was EUR 52m (EUR 74m a year ago). Dividend proposal of EUR 0.60 came below consensus of EUR 0.71. Atria issued a new guidance which expects decline in adjusted EBIT in 2024 (after EUR 49.6m in 2023) while consensus has modelled EUR 58.3m, or 18% increase. Atria expects challenging operating environment to continue in 2024. Although we view 2024 guidance as cautious, we believe consensus to trim its estimates by around 20% for 2024E and less for 2025E. We note the importance of the new poultry unit and believe the company has taken somewhat cautious view due to uncertainties related to the optimization phase of the new facility which likely burdens H1 performance, we believe.