Strong full-year performance

"During the year the global economy has been through turbulent times with significant uncertainty. With such global turmoil we are pleased that Chr. Hansen once again can report a strong performance. We delivered on our financial targets for the year with profitable growth across all business areas resulting in organic growth of 14%. Excluding the effect of carmine prices, organic growth reached 10%. The positive development is a clear evidence of the resilience and scalability of our business model," says CEO Lars Frederiksen.

"We continue on track to meet our long term growth expectations and expect organic growth in 2011/12 to reach 7-10% excluding the effect of carmine prices. We expect carmine prices to decline in the coming year affecting the organic growth negatively by approximately two percentage points to 5-8%. EBIT margin before special items is expected to be above 26%.

Revenue growth continues to be driven by increased demand for healthy food products not least from the growing middle income population in emerging markets and conversion from in-house bulk starter to industrialized produced cultures and from synthetic to natural colors," says Lars Frederiksen.

Highlights

• Revenue in 2010/11 amounted to EUR 636 million, up 15% compared to financial year 2009/10
• Organic revenue growth of 14%
• EBIT before special items up by 14% to EUR 159 million

• In Q4 2010/11 revenue increased by 5% compared to Q4 2009/10, corresponding to an organic revenue growth of 9%
• EBIT before special items reached 28% in Q4

Please see the annual report for further details.