January 13 (SeeNews) - Slovenian home appliances maker Gorenje [LJE:GRVG] said on Friday it plans a consolidated net profit of 13.1 million euro ($13.9 million) in 2017, up 62.3% compared with last year.
Consolidated revenues are expected to rise 4.6% year-on-year to 1.3 billion euro through December, while EBITDA is planned at 97.1 million euro, up 11.6%, Gorenje said in a filing to the Ljubljana bourse.
Gorenje Home segment is expected to generate a 5% yearly revenues growth based on higher sales under the premium brand Asko and sales growth in Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, Benelux, Germany, Scandinavia, Middle East, Asia, USA, and Australia. "With concurrent improvement of sales structure, we are thus planning to increase our average major home appliance downstream prices by 4 percent", the company noted.
In 2017, Gorenje will dedicate 2.7% of its revenue to investments into development, after last year it invested 32 million euro or 2.6%.
In relation to 2016, Gorenje said that it has been improving its performance since the start of the year and it expects an end-year net profit of 8 million euro.
Revenue for 2016 is estimated at 1.26 billion euro, up 2.6% on 2015, while EBITDA is seen at 87 million euro, an increase of 8.6% year-on-year.
"After a solid last quarter of 2015, Gorenje Group performance steadily improved throughout 2016 as each quarter of the year was wrapped up with a profit. In the business segment Home, we generated good 1.091 billion euro of revenue, which is 3.3 percent more than in 2015", the company said.
Consistently with its strategic plan, the company also improved its sales structure in terms of target markets and products in 2016.
"We increased our sales of innovative and premium appliances which now account for 27.4 percent of total major domestic appliance sales. Our sales were the highest with cooking appliances; our dishwasher sales were up 20 percent; and our small domestic appliance sales were increased by almost 33 percent", it said.
The group's net debt to EBITDA ratio at the end of 2016 is estimated at 3.9, down from 4.1 in 2015.
Gorenje's shares were traded at 6.500 euro as at 0948 CET on Friday, up 2.36% from Thursday's close.
($=0.940227 euro)