DS Smith has announced its full year results to 30th April 2024. Financial highlights include:
- Robust adjusted operating profit of £701m (FY2022/23: £861m), in line with management expectations, against a weak consumer demand environment and high inflation;
- Decline in like for like box volumes of 2%; improving momentum across the year with like for like growth of 2% in Q4 FY2023/24 vs Q4 FY2022/23;
- Strong customer relationships, innovation and high service levels, together with strong cost management, have partially offset downward pricing pressure;
- Lower free cashflow, reflecting our current capital expenditure programme and a working capital outflow, predominantly driven by commodity prices, has resulted in 2.1x net debt/EBITDA (FY2022/23: 1.3x). Underlying working capital metrics remain consistent with prior years.
Miles Roberts, Group Chief Executive, commented, “We are pleased to have delivered a robust performance, despite the challenging environment, driven by our focus on customers, quality, service and innovation together with the benefit from our self-help productivity initiatives. I am also very proud of the continued excellent progress in helping our customers’ sustainability challenges and to have achieved our target of 1 billion units of plastic replaced with fibre-based alternatives 16 months ahead of schedule.”
