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After the historical record achieved by Intercos in the months of November and December 2023 (127 million), new records followed in the first four months of 2024, with orders increasing compared to the first four months of 2023 for a total of 275 million (+ 19%). However, net revenues in the first quarter fell by 5.8% to 221.1 million with an Ebitda of 20.8 million, down by approximately 30% due to a cyber attack suffered by the company in February which, despite a first month of the year above expectations, led to a significant slowdown in the production and invoicing processes which lasted about a month and which mainly affected the production sites dedicated to make-up.
Make-up reported revenues of 127.9 million (-13.5%). In general, however, the Asian market recorded excellent performances, with the mass segment being able to benefit from the important orders collected in 2023. Skincare closed with 39.5 million, an increase of 22.8%. Unlike the make-up factories, the skincare factories were less affected by the cyber attack, being able to recover normal operations much more quickly. The excellent performance of the business unit was mainly achieved thanks to the good performances of Asian and North American customers. Hair & body recorded revenues of 53.7 million, substantially in line with those of 2023, although the factories in Poland and Italy still recorded performances below expectations due to the attack.
As regards the commercial areas, EMEA and America closed down by 7.9% (117.1 million) and 16.3% (60.6 million) respectively. Asia is the only region which, having been less impacted by the cyber attack, closed the quarter with strong revenue growth of 23.7% and equal to 43.4 million. Both Korea and China have contributed to this result, with local brands continuing to record excellent performances, both in make-up and skincare.
«The first quarter of 2024, which promised to be challenging due to the strong growth recorded in the first quarter of 2023 (+34%), could have been a new quarter of growth thanks to the excellent trend in order intake of the make-up and skincare, together with the expected performance of the hair&body business unit – comments Renato Semerari, CEO of Intercos -. Unfortunately, the cyber attack that hit our group on a global scale in February resulted on the one hand in a marked slowdown of production sites, especially those dedicated to make-up in Italy and the USA, and on the other hand serious inefficiencies in the production processes. transformation that lasted for about a month. However, we are very satisfied with the management of this extraordinary event by our global IT team: production remained stopped for a very limited time and during the entire crisis management period the solutions implemented, although less efficient in terms of costs, they allowed us to minimize the impact from a commercial point of view, allowing us to continue to offer a good level of service to our customers in an emergency context. Furthermore, after just one month, all sonog activities resumed in complete safety and normal operations were re-established.”
And he adds: «Now that the cyber attack is behind us, we approach the remaining nine months of the year with growth expectations both in terms of turnover and profitability. As anticipated, the order intake trend in the last six months has been exceptional, beating all the historical records of the Intercos Group each time. Furthermore, unlike last year, our prestige customers are gradually starting to order again at a normal pace, confirming what had been our previous expectations, namely that the inventory realignment phase was coming to an end. All this will not only allow us to recover the sales lost in the first quarter already in the second quarter of the year, but also to expect an increase in profitability, especially in the second part of 2024. All this has once again been made possible by our constant focus on innovation which allows us, as in the past, to anticipate the market and increasingly be a point of reference for all beauty brands in the world“.