LANDSBERG (dpa-AFX) - After a strong year, commercial kitchen equipment supplier Rational is targeting further growth with continued high profitability. Unit sales and sales revenues are expected to increase by a mid to high single-digit percentage in 2024 compared to the previous year, as the company announced on Wednesday when presenting its detailed figures for the past year in Landsberg. The Group, which expects to return to the MDax in June, is therefore somewhat more optimistic than the experts surveyed by Bloomberg. On average, they expect an increase of just under five percent. Rational shares rose significantly.

The shares gained a good eight percent to 841 euros in the morning. They had last cost more at the beginning of 2022. At that time, their downward trend had accelerated again after reaching a record high of over 1,000 euros in summer 2021. The price decline only stopped in the fall of 2022 at around 400 euros, and since then the trend has been upwards.

In terms of the margin measured by earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT), Group CEO Peter Stadelmann expects a figure close to the 2023 result. The fact that raw material and logistics costs have normalized is playing into the Group's hands. This will allow Rational to continue investing in strategic projects, drive forward the expansion of its sales structure and maintain profitability at the recent high level.

The commercial kitchen supplier sees more business momentum in 2024 than it expects, wrote analyst Sebastian Kuenne from the Canadian bank RBC in an initial assessment. The target for operating profit is slightly above market expectations. However, not all analysts have adjusted their estimates following the preliminary figures, meaning that the consensus is likely to be inaccurate. Following the surprisingly strong increase in sales in 2023 and the associated improvement in the operating profit margin, the canteen kitchen supplier is very confident for the current year, noted analyst Peter Rothenaicher from Baader Bank.

Last year, sales increased by a tenth to just under 1.13 billion euros, as has been known since January. Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) climbed by 17 percent to 277 million euros. The margin rose by 1.4 percentage points to 24.6 percent. It was also announced on Wednesday that the bottom line rose by 16 percent to just under 216 million euros.

The regular dividend is to be increased by 2.50 euros to 13.50 euros per share. This is slightly less than analysts had expected on average. For 2022, Rational had paid a special dividend of 2.50 euros per share in addition to the regular distribution, as in the previous year. With the special dividend, Rational had partially offset the dividend cut as a result of the coronavirus crisis - there is no such cut for the past year, meaning that the total dividend payment remains stable.

The main beneficiary of the dividend is the family of company founder Siegfried Meister, who died in 2017 and holds around half of the shares in the company, which is valued at around 9.6 billion euros on the stock exchange.

Even excluding the shares held by major shareholders, such as those from the founding Meister family, the company has a free float market capitalization of a good 4 billion euros. This is actually easily enough for a place in the index of mid-cap stocks, the MDax. However, Rational had to leave the MDax in mid-March because it failed to comply with a criterion of the German Corporate Governance Code, the recommendations for good corporate governance. Specifically, the term of office of the Chairman of the Audit Committee on the Supervisory Board, Hans Maerz, was the reason for the exclusion in accordance with the rules of the German stock exchange.

However, Rational should soon return to the MDax. Even before the exclusion from the index, it was planned that Maerz would no longer be a candidate for the Supervisory Board at the Annual General Meeting on May 8, 2024 after twelve successful years./mis/zb/mne/ngu