Cautious growth outlook for Tojner's battery company for the current year.
After a year of strong growth, the battery company Varta wants to pay a dividend for the first time since going public, as promised. The shareholders are to receive 2.50 euros per share for the past financial year, as the MDax group announced surprisingly on Wednesday evening in Ellwangen. The major Austrian shareholder and supervisory board chairman Michael Tojner had already announced a dividend in December.
A total of around 100 million euros is to be paid out. The dividend proposal is still subject to the approval of the boards. Varta went public again in 2017.
For the new year, however, the group was cautious about further growth. Sales are expected to rise to around 940 million euros in 2021. For 2020, 840 to 860 million were most recently planned (2019: 364 million euros). Analysts had an average of 1.08 billion euros on the list for the current year. Varta benefits in particular from its strong position in the market for rechargeable battery button cells for the booming wireless headphones.
For the margin of interest, taxes and depreciation adjusted for special effects, the Varta management plans an increase of 2.5 percentage points to up to 30 percent in 2021. The arithmetical 27.5 percent from 2020 would be slightly better than the analysts' estimates (almost 27 percent). Varta did not initially provide any further information – this Thursday the company presented the preliminary figures for the past year.
Investors rated the announcement as positive overall. In an initial reaction, the Varta share price rose by almost three percent on the Tradegate trading platform.
