Anpario plc

("Anpario" or the "Group")

Full Year Trading Statement

Anpario, the independent manufacturer of natural sustainable animal feed additives for health, nutrition and biosecurity, provides the following trading update for the year ended 31 December 2022.

Trading update

The Group experienced a weaker than expected final quarter, and in particular December's performance was adversely affected by several factors including our Chinese subsidiary where customer orders were impacted by the spread of Covid following the relaxation of restrictions. Other factors included orders which left the factory on time but were delayed at the port due to last minute shipping schedule changes and therefore missed the statutory cut-off period and certain other orders waiting for letters of credit and import permits which are now expected in early 2023.

During the year the Group experienced significant headwinds including raw material and logistics costs increases which reduced our margins, although margins did improve in the second half. Our customers have also been impacted by cost pressures, notably feed and energy, which is hurting their profitability and, in some cases, viability leading to reduced volumes of our products.

As previously announced in our interim report in September, the Group had legal and professional costs in relation to specific acquisition opportunities that did not proceed. For the full-year results, due to the exceptional and non-recurring nature of these costs, they will be excluded from our alternative profit measures such as adjusted EBITDA.

As a result of these factors, and subject to audit, we expect full year sales to be at least £33m and adjusted EBITDA¹ to be not less than £5m.

We expect the global economy to continue to be challenging, however, we are encouraged by the improvement in our gross margins in recent months as a result of our actions to increase sales prices and are experiencing an easing of raw material price inflation, both of which are helping the Group to rebuild its margins. We continue to invest in our global sales teams and product development which will help deliver profitable growth of the Group.

Financial position

Our financial position remains strong with year-end cash balances of £13.6m (30 Jun 2022: £13.3m). Through the second half of the year we increased cash by £0.3m, after £2.2m of dividend payments and further capital investments. Global logistics have been challenging over the past 18 months and in order to ensure supply to our customers we built up contingency in our inventory. However, the situation has started to improve and as such we have been able to start to reduce our working capital requirements and this process will continue into the new year.

Final results date

The Group expects to announce its final results for the year ended 31 December 2022 on 22 March 2023.

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) 596/2014 as it forms part of UK domestic law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 ("MAR"), and is disclosed in accordance with the Group's obligations under Article 17 of MAR.

¹ Adjusted EBITDA represents operating profit for the year adjusted for: acquisition costs; share based payments and associated costs; and depreciation, amortisation and impairment charges.

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