Berentzen Gruppe AG

XETRA:BEZ

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q2

[Thorsten Schmitt, executive]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We welcome you to our video conference call in light of today's publication of our half yearly financial report. I hope you are all doing well. I would also like to welcome the members of our Executive Board, Oliver Schwegmann, CEO; and Ralf Bruhofner, CFO. Oliver and Ralf will guide you through the presentation today and answer your questions. You can start with your questions even during the presentation. Please use the chat window for this. After the presentation, I will read out the questions as always, anonymous. We record this call and we'll publish it on our website. That's it from my side for now, Oliver, Ralf, the stage is yours.

[Oliver Schwegmann, executive]

Thank you, Thorsten. Dear ladies and gentlemen, this is Oliver Schwegmann, the CEO of the Berentzen-Gruppe speaking. Together with my colleague and CFO, Ralf Bruhofner, we, as the Executive Board of Berentzen-Gruppe would like to welcome all of you to our Half Year 2022 Results call. We trust that all of you are doing fine.

You should have received the presentation by e-mail in advance so that everybody can follow the charts we are referring to. After our presentation, we will, of course, take our time to answer all of your questions. Please allow me to start with a few words ahead of the presentation as we are all facing very volatile, uncertain and in many aspects, exceptional times. 2022 is the third year in a row in which companies have been facing challenges like never before.

After decades of growth in wealth and social prosperity, this journey might have come to an end for many years ahead of us. The pandemic was exhaustive and has cost companies and society a lot of substance. And now, as you all know, war is back in the heart of Europe. Besides thousands and thousands of terrible human fates, this war has also led to fragile global supply chains, cost increases for energy, material and logistics like never seen before, and consequently, to significant inflation rates that put many households under high financial pressure

Finally, many economists predict a global recession to come. Not to forget that corona might have largely been disappeared from every day in media, but it has surely not yet disappeared from our everyday life. In such an exceptionally challenging environment, only robust and resilient companies with a strong focus, solid strategic building blocks and a high level of commercial excellence can make it successfully through this time of a perfect storm. The Berentzen-Gruppe is one of those companies. We deliver what we promise and we promised to be a sustainably profitable company that immediately turns back to its growth agenda, once relieved the pandemic-driven consumer demand dip behind us.

So here we are. Welcome to our Half Year 2022 Results call. We at Berentzen, our purpose is to awaken the thirst for life. At Berentzen, all our employees are motivated and energized to work for the people and society to experience more liveliness, fresh optimism and joy of life. Berentzen delights people from morning to evening. Our brands and products accompany our consumers throughout the whole day. We wake them up with a healthy and freshly squeezed orange juice from Citrocasa , we quench their thirst with our natural mineral water, Emsland Quelle, we offer a refreshing flavor moment during the afternoon with one of our tasty Mio Mio flavors, we energize the party people with our Berentzen's [ shop ] liquors and we indulge our consumers at the end of the day with our premium rum Tres Países.

Berentzen is part of consumers' lives throughout the whole day. The Berentzen Group has clearly defined its strategic and long-term growth pillars. Each of our business areas contribute to our sustainable profitable growth path. Within each business area, there is one strategically leading topic to which the organizational focus and the resource allocation is directed. Those topics are our engine for beyond market growth rates and for overproportional gross margins. Within our branded spirits business, we focus on the consumer demand for socializing and celebrations.

Our core brands, Berentzen and Pushkin, which are especially known for a wide range of colorful liquor shots are a popular company for parties, festivals and many other social gatherings of young others. Within our private label business, we clearly focus on the consumer demand of highest indulgence and quality in affordable price. Together with our retail partners across Europe, we developed exclusive top premium spirits at an attractive price, which especially during times of high inflation offer new shopper group's access to top premium products.

Within our nonalcholic beverages business, it is all about the consumers' demand for exploring new tastes and varieties. Today, consumers do not stick to the same products, but they want to try new brands, new products and new taste varieties. Miami is one example how to successfully bring a new and modern brand with a wide range of taste flavors to a young and curious consumer group.

Last but not least, within our Fresh Juice Systems business, we give the perfect answer to a growing global consumer megatrend of healthy lifestyle. Consumers more and more strive for a healthy lifestyle with a fresh and high-quality products. Citrocasa gives the ultimate freshness experience through a freshly squeezed healthy orange juice at the point of purchase.

Now let's turn to Chart #6, which gives an overview of the financial highlights for the first half year of 2022. First, let's have a look at the H1 revenue development. We have always said very clearly that the Berentzen-Gruppe is well prepared to return to the growth path once the exceptional restrictions of public and social life due to the pandemic situation is over. Despite certain and ongoing restrictions in the first quarter of 2022, we were still able to achieve a strong double-digit growth in revenues of plus 16.7% versus the first half year of 2021. With a turnover level of EUR 79 million, we even achieved largely the level of the last prepandemic year of 2019.

You can also see the often mentioned Pepsi contract bottling effect marked in these figures. The contract billing agreement with Pepsi had a full year effect of more than EUR 12 million in the past. However, those low-margin agreements do not deliver healthy gross profits. Therefore, stopping the contract filling agreement led to a significant revenue drop, but only to a minor gross profit effect. If we take out the Pepsi effect, our organic growth rate is even more convincing. We achieved a growth rate of plus 21.4% versus the first half of 2021, and we even reached a turnover growth of plus 8.1% versus the first half of 2019. 2019, as you all know, was the last pre-pandemic business here, and it was a very successful one for Berentzen-Gruppe.

Therefore I am convinced that you all agree with me when I say that the Berentzen-Gruppe is clearly back on its growth path. Now let's have a look at the group's profitability. Despite major cost increases for energy, packaging and raw material and logistics, we were able to deliver strong business results. Our gross profit reached EUR 37.3 million in the first 6 months of 2022, which represents a growth -- a strong growth rate of plus 17.2%. However, the positive development of our gross margin quality in the past years has significantly slowed down in the second quarter of 2022 due to the often mentioned material cost increases. Those increases are kicking in more and more in the course of the year, and they will continue to put our gross margins under pressure. Therefore, compared to the first half year of 2021, our gross margin in the first 6 months of 2022 is lower at a level of 45.5%.

Consequently, our biggest commercial challenge during this year and even the upcoming years will be to successfully put through significant product price increases against strong and mighty retailers, especially in Germany. If you have followed the media over the recent months, it might have come to your attention that there are already big fights going on between industry and retailers during tough price negotiations. The biggest challenge is to manage the significant time delays between the arrival of supply cost increases on the one hand and successfully finalized price increase negotiations with the retailers on the other hand.

Please note that often our suppliers announced material price increases with only 1 day before they come into effect, whereas we have to announce our price increases 3 months ahead with often another 3 months on top before finalizing the negotiations. Even though we are currently making good progress in pushing through price increases, there is still a long remaining way to go to fully equalize the current material cost increases.

If you look at our EBITDA development, we can also see a double-digit growth rate of 11.7%. Due to diverse cost increases, for example, for energy and stuff, but also higher spending, for example, for marketing campaigns and our own growing field force, the EBITDA margin is below H1 2021 at 9.6%. Looking at our EBIT development, you can see a strong development of plus 41.9% to EUR 3.7 million. Also, the EBIT margin grew significantly from 3.9% in the first half year of 2021 to 4.6% in 2022. The major reason behind this is a lower depreciation and amortization by EUR 281,000. However, in terms of EBIT, we are not yet at the level of the pre-pandemic 2019 figure when we closed the first half year at EUR 5 million with an EBIT margin at 6.3%.

To summarize those convincing financial figures in a very tough market environment, we can underline that we are on a pre-pandemic level when it comes to revenues and gross profit, but still have a bit to go to reach the prepandemic EBIT quality. The main driver behind our strong top line growth rate but also behind our gross margin quality despite massive cost increases is the dynamic performance of the Berentzen-Gruppe's strategic core topics. Those topics are the fundamentals of our ongoing growth agenda as much as they are the warranty for our ongoing valorization ambition.

Moreover, all our strategic core topics were clearly outperforming the development of the market segments they belong to. Our core brands within the branded spirits business, Berentzen and Pushkin, grew in turnover by 23.5%. Besides the removal of corona restrictions, it is also our strong in-store excellence and promotions as much as new products that stand behind this strong development, especially the liquors of our main brand Berentzen, the well-known and highly appreciated party and festival drink drove this strong overall performance with a turnover growth of plus 28.7%.

When it comes to our private label business, the strategic fundamental of the sustainable and profitable growth agenda is our focus on valorized and exclusive premium concepts that we realized in cooperation with our retail partners. Those so-called premium and medium spirits were even able to significantly grow during the corona years 2020 and 2021. In the first half of 2022, we were able to continue this growth path with a turnover plus of 13.6%. This growth rate is also far beyond the overall market development of premium spirits as high inflation rates and lower consumer spending power are currently putting this market segment down.

This market environment is even beneficial for our premium private label product as they deliver the same product quality like the leading premium brands at a much lower and affordable price. For many years, our brand Mio Mio is a growth jewel within our group. The second quarter was an exceptionally strong one for Mio Mio. After the first quarter 2022, the revenue growth level of 6.8%, Mio Mio now demonstrates its ongoing strength with a cumulative growth in the first half of 2022 of 16.2% in an overall stagnating market, going from a plus 6.8% to accumulative plus 16.2% implies a growth rate of 24.3% in the second quarter of 2022.

Increasing distribution levels, strong in-store and promotional performance as large as an outstanding start of our 2 new varieties, Orange and Lemon made up the fundamental of this growth performance. We always said that the growth dynamic of Mio Mio will accelerate over the year and it did. We are convinced that we can push this growth rate even further in the months and years to come.

Finally, we are very happy that our Fresh Juice Systems business shows convincing growth rates after this business segment did suffer the most from the consequences of the global pandemic. We are satisfied with our revenue growth of plus 28%, although the absolute revenue size still remains behind the pre-pandemic level. We are convinced that we will continue with our revenue rebound after the pandemic years 2020 and 2021, even though the current market environment remains challenging, especially for Citrocasa with high inflation rates, lower consumer spending power and even retailers suffering from many shoppers disappearing towards hard discounters and low-priced products.

Now let's have a quick look at the main performance building blocks of each of our business segments. Overall, spirits revenues are growing at plus 15.3%, which represents an absolute growth of EUR 6.3 million. Besides the double-digit performance of our strategic core topics, we also managed to grow in all other areas too. The overall growth of branded spirits in Germany is at a level of plus 22.8%. Please note that the overall turnover development of the spirits market in Germany in the first half of 2022 is only at plus 2.4%. Therefore, the Berentzen-Gruppe's branded spirits turnover development is outperforming the overall market by a multiple.

If you look at the international development of our branded spirits, we can see an even stronger growth rebound of plus 51.4% after the pandemic, especially the Netherlands as the most important export market for our brand Berentzen, as well as the return of the Travel Retail business were the key drivers behind this strong overall performance.

With this performance of our export turnover, we are even significantly growing versus the first half year of 2019 at about plus 22%. The main driver behind the overall private label revenue performance of plus 8.7% are the premium and medium product concepts at a growth level of plus 13.6%. However, even the big volume-driven business of our price entry products achieved a revenue growth of about 6% in the first half of 2022 versus 2021.

Now let's have a look at our nonalcoholic beverage segment. Our brand Mio Mio remains the growth engine within our non-alcoholic beverage segment. Our overall segment turnover growth is at 6.7%, whereas the brand Mio Mio grows by plus 16.2%. Please note that the overall lemonade market in Germany is only stable in value with the development of 0.0%. So Mio Mio is also outperforming the market by a multiple.

Moreover, also our regional brands, which mainly consist of our regional mineral water brands, Emsland Quelle and Märkisch Kristall contribute to the overall positive turnover development. With the growth at a rate of plus 6.3%, we again outperformed the overall nonalcholic beverage market in Germany by far, as it is only stable in value at 0% in the first 6 months of the year 2022.

Besides the strong double-digit performance of Mio Mio as well as a convincing performance of our regional brands, also the franchise business is a strong growth contributor. There are 2 reasons behind this turnover development of more than 300%. First, we can see a turnover rebound of our franchise brand Sinalco because of the post-pandemic effect. Restaurants, bars, festivals, the social life is fully back and with it our so-called on-trade business.

Second, in 2022, we kicked off different rap artist cooperations. In March, we started to produce and distribute the brand Wild Crocodile, which has been created in cooperation with 2 famous German rap artists. It is a nonalcoholic beverage product that comes in 4 different flavors. Also very recently and therefore, still not included in the first half year figure, we also launched [ Sugar Mommy ], a soft drink brand created in cooperation with a famous rap artist.

Although these cooperations are not seen as strategic pillars within our group strategy, there are still tactical short-term opportunities to capitalize the current market trend and consumer demand for such products.

To summarize the overall performance of our non-alcoholic beverages segment, I would like to underline that we outperformed the German market performance of soft drinks as much as of mineral water by a multiple. Moreover, our performance is still significantly affected by the ending of the Pepsi contract bottling at the end of Q1 of 2021. This negative Pepsi effect has a turnover value of about EUR 2.6 million, which was already fully part of the Q1 2022 results. If we take out this effect, our overall nonalcoholic beverages turnover development in the first 6 months of 2022 would even be at a much stronger level of 24.1% versus the first half of 2021.

Finally, let's have a deeper look into the development building blocks of our Fresh Juice Systems business. As mentioned before, we achieved a strong double-digit growth for our Fresh Juice Systems business at plus 28%. You are aware that this business segment was the most negatively affected by corona due to various reasons. First, there was strong investment restraint due to an uncertain economic environment. Second, many restaurants and hotels were closed during corona. And third, even many retailers, despite that can be seen as crisis winners, put their juicing systems out of operation and removed them from the store floor to avoid the juice as being an infection risk for their shoppers.

With the current strong revenue performance, we are not yet at the level of our prepandemic years. However, we do see clear and strong signs of a healthy recovery of this business segment. It's definitely the fact that all 3 components: fruit Juicers, fruits and bottling systems are each contributing to this overall performance with double-digit growth figures makes it even more promising. It shows us that our customers step-by-step regained trust to invest into our juicers, as their shoppers and clients are back.

Moreover, especially the strong growth rate of the bottling systems at plus 51.7% demonstrates impressively that the consumer demand for freshly squeezed orange juices at the point of sale is backed on a very high level. The revenue level of the bottling systems in the first 6 months of 2022 is already significantly higher than in the first half year of the pre-pandemic year 2019.

I would now like to hand over to my colleague Ralf Bruhofner, who gives you further information about our financial structure and forecasts.

[Ralf Bruhofner, executive]

Thank you, Oliver, and good morning all together from my side. Please have a look on Slide 12 of the presentation. Financial stability, solidity and a good solvency were always core principles of the Berentzen-Gruppe, and they are getting even more important in times like these and high levels of unpredictability, volatility and uncertainties. Keeping this in mind, we are proud to show you financing ratios, which will convince you that your assets invested in the Berentzen-Gruppe are in [indiscernible] hands. A short remark from my side before I start with my explanations when I talk about 1 million, I mean EUR 1 million.

So as you can see, the equity ratio as per June 30 raised up significantly by 420 basis points to 38.6%, an effect, which is mainly related to the smaller balance sheet total. This total decreased by approximately EUR 30 million to EUR 129.4 million compared to year-end 2021. The shorter balance total was based on 2 main effects; first, on the typical seasonal patterns of our alcohol tax liabilities. In general, the stronger year-end business with spirits leads to a higher liability of alcohol tax. Secondly, the shorter balance is related to the repayment of a bullet loan facility with EUR 7.5 million. This bullet loan was a part of the EUR 33 million syndicated loan credit facility until 2021. The bullet loan charge can be drawn again with a maximum of EUR 11 million out of the EUR 33 million syndicated loan, whenever it is needed.

In addition, the total of equity plus the noncurrent liability, which together amount to EUR 60.1 million exceeded the noncurrent assets by approximately EUR 3.4 million. This illustrates, as you know, the matching maturities between the long-term financing items on the one hand and the noncurrent assets, on the other hand, and it gives a good picture about the solidity of the finance structure.

Another important ratio is the regard -- in this regard, is the net debt position, which is at least a net cash position instead. It decreased from EUR 70.5 million at the end of 2021 to EUR 2.8 million as to end of June 2022. The main reason for the decrease of the net cash between year's end and half year's end is the already mentioned seasonal loss of the financing effect of the alcohol tax. This pattern repeats basically from year-to-year, and it becomes clearer when you take a look at the EUR 12 million cash decrease of the previous period, in which the cash started with EUR 60 million at the beginning of the year and ended with EUR 4 million at the end of June 2021. I added the numbers on the right side of the chart.

The relatively higher numbers of cash as well as our financial debts at the end of 2021 related to the already mentioned $7.5 million bullet loan, which was in 2021 part of the cash on the one hand and financial debt on the other hand. As I said, it was redeemed in 2022 and therefore, lowered the cash and financial debt position as per end of June 2020.

Let's please move on to Slide 13 and have a look at our cash flow and solvency situation. A higher [indiscernible] EBITDA but slightly lower net cash in comparison to the figures 1 year ago, lead to some minor changes regarding the net debt-to-EBITDA ratio, the so-called dynamic gearing ratio. The ratio amounts to minus 0.8 and it is because of the net cash instead of net debt, still negative. And it's so far quite far away from any kind of covenant breaches, which are basically contained in our syndicated loan agreements.

The operating cash flow, the number is shown on the bottom right of the slide was positive, an increase from EUR 5.1 million in the first half year 2021 to EUR 6 million in the first 6 months of 2020 (sig) 2022. The main source of the operating cash flow is the net income plus the noncash effective costs of depreciations and amortizations. In sum, this amounts to EUR 5.9 million. Furthermore, as per June 2020, our net income was influenced by adjustments regarding high inflation accounting according to IAS 29.

The revaluation of the monetary assets and liabilities of our subsidiary based in Turkey has led to a negative impact on our net income by approximately EUR 0.6 million without being cash effective. Therefore, the cash flow coming from the net income was -- must be adjusted by this issue.

So this was a short review of our balance sheet and cash flow of the Berentzen-Gruppe. I hope that the numbers and explanations give you an impression and good understanding about how solid the financial structure of the Berentzen-Gruppe is.

Let's please now move on the outlook for the upcoming months and you will find it on Slide 14. In the light of our good results and dynamic growth of revenues in the first half year, we adjusted our outlook for the whole year 2020, although there are some big uncertainties concerning the future macroeconomic development in 2020. The war in Ukraine, the further COVID-19 pandemic development, the ongoing significant price increases for energy, raw other materials, and last but not least, the challenge of stabilizing procurement and supply will affect our business to a huge extent, which is always uncertain and we normally can handle that, but the future in these days is a much higher level of Do Not Knows.

We expect significantly increased revenues coming from EUR 146.1 million in 2021 and being EUR 158 million to EUR 165 million in 2022. Previously, we have fall seen in the turnover in a range between EUR 454 million to EUR 162 million. Therefore, the revenues will be pretty much higher than in '21 here in which corona restrictions heavily affected our business and please keep this in mind, in which the Pepsi contract bottling agreement was still in force for one quarter and contributed around EUR 2.6 million to the group's total turnover of that year.

If you adjust the Pepsi effect, the revenues will even be higher as in the last pre-COVID year 2019, in which we realized a turnover of EUR 167.4 million. Having said that, please let me underline that every business segment will continue its revenue growth in 2022, of course, to a different extent and will, therefore, contribute to the positive growth tenets. Slightly in contrast with the expected positive development of the revenues, we are not as optimistic when it comes to earnings. As already mentioned, price pressures on raw materials use, energy, labor costs and simply every other procurement issue are severe challenges for EBIT and EBITDA.

These expectations led to only slight adjustments of EBIT and EBITDA forecast. Having already achieved an EBIT of EUR 3.7 million, we are confident to get additional earnings in the second half year with a minimum of EUR 2.3 million and a maximum of EUR 4.7 million, which means that the consolidated EBIT in this year would be in the range between EUR 6 million and EUR 8 million, whereas the EBITDA is anticipated in a range between EUR 15 million to EUR 17 million. Previously, we expected a consolidated EBIT between 5 million to 8 million and the consolidated EBITDA between EUR 14 million to EUR 17 million.

Last but at least, I would like to give you an additional information about our financial calendar for the rest of '22, which you can find on Slide 15, especially, I will turn your attention towards our Virtual Capital Markets Day ahead on the 27th and 28th of September. We will invite you in due course and would be very glad to meet you there. That's it from my side, Oliver, perhaps some last words...

[Oliver Schwegmann, executive]

Ladies and gentlemen, we are at the end of our presentation now, and we are very happy to answer your questions.

[Thorsten Schmitt, executive]

Yes. Thank you, Ralf and Oliver, for this overview. So now let's move on to the questions. We have already a few questions so far. While I will start to read them out, all of you have the opportunity to ask some more questions, if you like.

So let's start, first questions. How do you plan to prevent the gross margin from failing further due to rising material costs? To what extent can the rising costs be passed on to the consumer? Do you have index of purchase or sales contracts? Are the material costs hedged with futures?

[Oliver Schwegmann, executive]

First of all, this is what I mentioned in the presentation is that, of course, we have to forward our price increases to the retailers. We cannot make up the prices for consumers. That is the role of our retailers which are very free to define their selling prices. But what we need to do is our prices, our product prices to the retailers, we need to increase, which we already did at the beginning of the year, which we will go on to do during -- in the course of this year and of course, which will be needed in the upcoming quarters and years.

The price increases are so substantial that you will not be able to just give out one price increase to a retailer that everything is covered. That's not sure. But at the end of the day, it will be the only way to regain the previous gross margin quality and we will go this way over the next quarters and, of course, years. So in our forecast or let's say, in our view in the future, it would be like, number one, we are growing with the right product with our strategic products, which have an overproportional gross margin. And of course, price increases will kick in more and more. But as I said in my speech is that there is currently a time lag between our effective cost increases and the forward price increases. So price increases are the one and portfolio mix, of course.

About the hedging, sorry, -- we do not hedge any of the materials. Normally, we have contracts. But again, even if we have contracts, very often, suppliers, of course, call, they have such a high price increases that we need to accept even price increases within the contract period. But by the way, we do pretty much the same with our retailers, where we often have price contracts over a year or calendar year and which we need to reopen because the situation is so exceptional.

[Thorsten Schmitt, executive]

Okay. Next questions. Congratulations for these results. Could you please tell us what are the implications for Berentzen as regards the acquisition of Zummo by SEB.

[Oliver Schwegmann, executive]

Yes. Of course, this came to our attention too. This is competition. This is market dynamics. I would say, yes, Zummo has been sold to a private equity, I think, 2 or 3 years before. So we were already prepared for more dynamic on the Zummo side because Zummo, I think, since 2 or 3 years now, is not privately owned anymore, but owned by a private equity, who, of course, pushed the sales quite strongly.

So it is -- like in all other businesses, we have a competitor. Now we have a competitor probably who will be stronger than before with a big company behind. But on the other hand side, to be honest, we see a global strong market for the juicers. Now we have more or less 3 companies who are really attacking the market with Zumex, Zummo and our Citrocasa and sometimes if a market is still a very young market and still not very highly penetrated in many countries, a strong competitor can even drive the overall segment of this business, maybe this can even help to raise the top of mind of this overall topic.

[Thorsten Schmitt, executive]

Do you see in the next month a risk on bottling. Are you anticipating scarcity of bottles?

[Oliver Schwegmann, executive]

Currently, and this is we are very happy to be able to say that is that we do not have shortages of material and raw material, et cetera. We have diverse suppliers, even diverse suppliers for one material. We have very, very long-term and trusted relationship to all our suppliers. So until now, we do see sometimes slight delays. Sometimes it can be that we expect 2 big tanks of raw alcohol and one is only coming 2 days later. So it gives a little bit more complexity in our production planning and shift planning. But so far, we are not short in any of the materials and how we look into the future, we don't think that in terms of packaging and materials that we will have a shortage. Nobody can say anything about energy, of course. But when it comes to our classical materials like bottles, like lids, like paper labels and so on, we don't see any shortages.

[Thorsten Schmitt, executive]

Question about the contract filling agreement that you had with Pepsi. Did Berentzen examined alternatives such as Coca-Cola, for example. Is there a particular reason why Berentzen is not working with a new partner.

[Oliver Schwegmann, executive]

I mean, one reason, of course, as we said, and this is part of our big group strategy. We want to focus all our resources and attention to our own product portfolio. And if you would look at the development of the gross profit we generate with our own brands today versus 5 years ago, you can see that we did a really good job in pushing our own portfolio, pushing our own brands.

And the second reason is that all this contract bottling, there is a big, big, big competition in contract bottling because there is a lot of contract bottling capacities on the market, which means if you are a part of tenders, it's very, very tough price discussions. And very often, a little bit like Pepsi, the turnover is nice, but the gross profit is too low.

Of course, we still do have contract bottling for the minor part. And if there is an opportunity which fits and which pays off and which guarantees us also reasonable gross profit qualities, we will step into, but we are not forcing it at this moment.

[Thorsten Schmitt, executive]

Second question, why is Berentzen not more focusing on the Benelux market around about 29 million citizens. Over here in Belgium, Berentzen is barely visible. I understood that Berentzen, for example, are working on the Austrian market, but why not more on the Benelux, which is even geographically much closer.

[Oliver Schwegmann, executive]

I wouldn't 100% agree with this statement because if you look at the brand Berentzen, the second strongest market is Netherlands. So that means the brand Berentzen and young adults and students in Netherlands, the brand Berentzen is even more top of mind than in Germany. So it's a very strong export market for our brands, especially Berentzen. On the other hand side, we started with the first customer for Mio Mio. The same is what we're doing with Poland and with Austria. And third, we are working together with Benelux also in our private label business. For example, we are -- we deliver a high premium rum in the private lab business, this is [indiscernible]Belgium.

So there is business with these countries. There's also business on the branded side and on the private label side. But at the end of the day, we do need to see if we bring a brand to a new country, does it add value? And what is the market entry cost for these things. And then we decide which is the best way. And I don't know whether this question was only related to spirits because we started with Mio Mio in the Netherlands.

[Ralf Bruhofner, executive]

Yes, we did, as I said.

[Oliver Schwegmann, executive]

And of course, sorry, we have more at Citrocasa. I mean we have a very long, long-term relationship to a strong distributor of Citrocasa in Netherlands. So if you go through supermarkets in Netherlands, you will see our product of Citrocasa, so and so.

[Thorsten Schmitt, executive]

Okay. We have one more last question. So this is the last opportunity here. When you have some more questions, you can ask them right now. Last question so far, Spirit segments. Growth at Berentzen plus 33%, Pushkin plus 6.6%. Could you please make some comments on this difference? Are there any special effects?

[Oliver Schwegmann, executive]

Yes, there is indeed a special effect on Pushkin -- especially on the Pushkin [indiscernible], last year, in the first half of the year, we had a very, very strong promotional activity in the discount channel with Pushkin which we didn't have repeated yet, which has been postponed to the second half of 2022. So -- and this was really a high volume and high value promotional activity. You know that the discount channel is a very mighty one in Germany, and there is one big, big, big initiative missing in the first half, that would also cover a lot of this, let's say, reduced performance actually. By the way, the performance in the [ sellout ], I mean what the market research indicates the performance is better than what we see in the [indiscernible] into the market.

[Thorsten Schmitt, executive]

Okay. We have no more questions. So I think we are at the end for today. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for your questions. Ralf, Oliver, thank you for your presentation and your answers. Just one more question right now. So are you expecting more pressure on wage increases in order to compensate high inflation?

[Oliver Schwegmann, executive]

Yes, we do expect, of course, you see that overall in the country. And there will be some pressures on tariffs and wages and we expect. To add that, we already closed some issues concerning that in the beginning of the year, so that leads us to perhaps better results when you look at the financial year 2022, but coming up to the next month, there will be more pressure, of course.

[Thorsten Schmitt, executive]

Okay. So once again, I think we are at the end. Wait for a few seconds. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for your participation and your interest in the Berentzen-Gruppe. If you have any questions afterwards, please do not hesitate to contact us. We wish you a nice day to hope to see you soon, maybe at our Virtual Capital Markets Day in September. All the best. Bye-bye.

[Oliver Schwegmann, executive]

Thank you. Bye. Bye-bye.

[Ralf Bruhofner, executive]

Bye-bye.