Vending

Selecta sales improve in Q4 2021

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March 16, 2022

Selecta Group, Europe's leading route-based self-service retailer, reported its highest quarterly sales for the year in Q4 2021, according to an earnings report. Highlights include:

• Sales rose 15.7% to €286.3 million ($314.9 million), the highest sales quarter in the year.
• Despite restrictions due to new COVID variants, the group continued to see activity gradually picking up reaching 79% of Q4 2019 group's sales.
• Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization reached €158.1 million ($173.9 million) while adjusted EBITDA of €199.3 million ($219.2 million) rose €114.1 million ($125.5 million) compared to 2020 and overachieving the noteholder plan by €26 million ($28.6 million).
• Four key markets — France, the U.K. and Ireland, Spain and Italy — were the most affected by the pandemic, due to the impact of working from home policies in the private sector and client attrition and saw a strong sales increase year on year. Other countries' sales performance showed a significantly narrowed gap in the quarter compared to 2019.
• The semi-public and the public segments posted the strongest performance.
• In the private segment, sales improvement was driven by both services and administration and manufacturing and logistics.
• In the semi-public segment, sales improvement was driven by education, healthcare and horeca with retail slightly lagging.
• Sales showed strong growth in all public segments.
• For the full year, sales rose 3.2% to €1.04 billion ($1.14 billion), and reached 73% of 2019 sales.

"As European countries begin removing their COVID restrictions, we remain convinced that Selecta has the solutions needed to address the needs of the post-COVID world," CEO Christian Schmitz said in the press release.

For an update on how the coronavirus pandemic has affected convenience services, click here.