Balta Annual Report 2021 with ups and downs

How is Balta doing? The conference call on the financial year 2021 was awaited with particular excitement - not least because of the sale of various business units to the British Victoria Group.

Balta CEO Cyrille Ragoucy, Transformation Officer Ruben Tattheeuws and CFO Jan-Christian Werner looked back on an eventful 2021: consolidated turnover increased by 12.9% to EUR 634.3 million. Area rugs (Balta Home) increased by an impressive EUR 50.7 million, the residential segment by EUR 14.2 million and the contract segment by EUR 7.6 million. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA rose by 28 % to EUR 87 million: Balta had budgeted for price increases early on, even before the increased cost of materials took hold. At 1.5 %, fixed costs were only slightly above those of the previous year.

The problem is that the high-growth area rugs are being transferred to Victoria - together with the PP carpets for the residential sector and the nonwovens. Balta will retain the residential polyamide carpeting and the contract carpeting.

The Belgians' debt has also increased: mainly due to higher material, energy and transport costs, 47.5 million euros have been added; the total sum now amounts to 330.7 million euros.

The Balta management team was particularly satisfied with the development of the Next cost-cutting and efficiency-boosting programme: around EUR 4 million had been saved in 2021. It is also still quite possible to reach the pre-pandemic level with the business units remaining at Balta.

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