REVENUE INCREASE IN THE FIRST HALF OF 2023 IN SLOWER MARKET

Financial results H1 2023 versus H1 2022*:

• Revenue increased by 3.5% to €2,768 million
• Normalized EBITDA decreased by 11% to €201 million
• Normalized EBITDA margin decreased to 7.3% of revenue (H1 2022: 8.4%)

Whilst the challenging macroeconomic environment continued to persist and affect market conditions, BME increased revenues by 3.5% versus H1 2022 to €2,768 million, as the contribution of acquisitions compensated for a 2% negative organic growth. Normalized EBITDA decreased by 11% to €201 million. As expected, volume declines accelerated in Northern Europe and price inflation showed a downward trend within a deflationary environment. Also, high inflation levels on operating costs started to affect the Group’s operational results this year. In contrast to the market conditions in Northern Europe, the Group benefited from our diversified geographic footprint, having more favorable market conditions in Southern Europe (France, Spain and Portugal) and which showed strong organic growth.

The Group continued to deliver results from its strategic initiatives and through disciplined cost management allowed to offset part of the negative market impact on EBITDA. BME also continued its growth journey by conscious expanding its footprint by completing six acquisitions in the first half of 2023 which will bring synergies and additional revenues in the years to come.

Remco Teulings, CEO of BME Group, commented:

“After a challenging though very successful year in 2022, we are facing a really different year in 2023. This is also what we expected given the negatively trending key drivers for our business in our key geographies. Particularly the relatively high interest rates and increased cost of building materials have been mainly impacting the new build residential market and more recently, putting increasing pressure on our renovation end market which is also the most important part of our business.

That said, we are still making good progress on the execution of our key strategic initiatives and disciplined cost management which is helping us to mitigate the impact of lower activity on our results.

Despite this, we also keep on looking for the right bolt-on acquisitions across our key geographies and this has resulted in four new acquisitions so far this year.

Following the publication of our first Sustainability report earlier this year, we have started to embed our sustainable action points as outlined in the report in our day-to-day work. For that, I am happy to report that we have signed new green energy contracts for the most of our businesses and that we are on schedule to retrofit all of our locations with LED lights by the end of the year. We will continue unabated with our ambition to make the entire value chain more sustainable.

We are convinced that we are taking the right measures to navigate through this more challenging environment and this will bring opportunities as the underlying drivers and fundamentals in our key markets are continuing to look very promising, particularly driven by energy efficiency renovations and the structural housing shortage.

By working closely with our customers and suppliers, and the efforts of our dedicated employees, we will continue our excellent growth journey. I want to take the opportunity to thank all our stakeholders for working alongside us, both in the good times as well as in these very dynamic times”.

^{*Updated per 12 September 2023 to report post IFRS16 EBITDA, to be in line with previous press releases.}