Bulgaria's Monbat fcasts steady rise in cons revenue, EBITDA by 2023, plans acquisitions

Monbat is in the final stages of acquiring a company based in Tunisia, which is expected to contribute nearly a quarter of the Monbat's consolidated EBITDA in 2023, the company said on Thursday in an interim update on its five-year business plan.

Monbat's EBITDA is expected to amount to some 18.9-19.6 million euro ($20.7-21.4 million) this year and to grow to 36.5 million euro in 2023. Revenue is projected at 165.9 million euro in 2019 and is seen growing to 225.9 million euro in 2023.

Monbat's also expects to post a consolidated gross profit of 38.2 million euro in 2019, which is then projected to reach 56.7 million euro consolidated in 2023.

"Monbat managed to re-gain its operational performance level of 2017, after a challenging 2018, respectively will head to the envisaged growth path," the company said.

Among the current main drivers of growth, Monbat highlights the acquisition of a recycling plant in Italy in late 2017. 

"The acquisition of the plant allowed the Group to gain access to the institutionally regulated (COBAT and other smaller scrap collection and distribution organizations) Italian scrap market, which will increase the group-wide availability of scrap batteries at favourable purchase price," Monbat noted.

The company also reported upbeat expectations regarding the quantity of starter, stationary and commercial vehicle batteries sold.

Earlier on Thursday, Monbat said that its consolidated profit before taxes soared by 318.4% on the year to 12.6 million levs in the first eight months of 2019, while net sales revenue rose by 10.0% year-on-year to 210.5 million levs.

($ =  0.9144 euro)