Hilton Food Group shares fell 1.1% to 1,208p in early morning trading on Wednesday following the company’s announcement of an International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) pre-tax profit drop of 12.3% to £47.4 million against £54 million in 2020 in its preliminary results for 2021.
The company’s revenue rose 21.6% to £3.3 billion compared to £2.7 billion last year.
However, the Hilton Food Group’s IFRS basic earnings per share fell 7.4% to 45p against its 48.6p result in 2020.
The Hilton Food Group reported a sustained growth across all protein categories for the last two years, with meat and seafood hitting 14.3% volume growth, vegan and vegetarian recorded at 26.4% and added value easier meals coming in at 36% .
The protein company expanded into international markets, with over 75% of its business achieved outside the UK.
“This has been a year of delivery and diversification,” said Hilton Food Group CEO Philip Heffer.
“We have delivered another strong financial performance with volumes and revenue both growing, maintaining a trend of continuous volume growth every year since Hilton’s flotation in 2007.”
Hilton Food Group further acquired European vegetarian producer Dalco and entered the North American market with its acquisition of smoked salmon producer Foppen with a £75 million equity raise.
The Group also expanded into UK out-of-home meat food services with its acquisition of Fairfax Meadow.
“We have also made strategic progress in diversifying the business. Last year, we set ourselves the goal of becoming the protein partner of choice,” said Heffer.
“Put simply, we want to offer all the proteins people want to put on their plates, in home and out of home, not just in Europe and Asia, but in North America too.”
“To reach that goal, we have been transforming our business to expand into new protein products and categories, to enter new international markets, to deepen our technology and engineering capabilities, and to expand our sustainability commitments across all protein categories.”
The firm announced a proposed final dividend of 21.5p, amounting to a total dividend of 29.7p, which was an increase over its 26p offering in 2020.