Balta Q1 Revenue Growth Driven Partly by Bentley Mills Success

Sint-Baafs,Vijve, Belgium, May 7, 2019--Balta reported Q1 2019 consolidated revenue growth of 13.1% YOY, driven partly by Bentley's double-digit growth.

Organic growth for the period was 11.5%.

By division, revenue increases were as follows: rugs, 23.1%; commercial, 15.4%; and residential, 2.3%. 

The company issued the following statements about its U.S. business.

* U.S. e-commerce shipments from our new dedicated warehouse in Savannah started in Q1 and are ramping up as planned. Commercial U.S. realized successful double-digit revenue growth both in office and new targeted segments. Residential saw positive impact from the launch of additional new collections.

* Rugs growth driven by the year-on-year share of wallet increase for the U.S. outdoor programs and the timing of new program roll-outs in Europe. The strong volume we realized in Q1 however came with an unfavorable mix effect, negatively impacting margins. Conditions in our European markets generally remain challenging.

* Strong overall growth in Commercial, driven by continued double-digit growth of our U.S. business which continues to win share. In Europe, we saw a decline as the market environment remains more challenging.  

Cyrille Ragoucy, CEO and chairman of the board, said, “Our first quarter results were in-line with our expectations and we are on track for the full year 2019 guidance we provided in March. Both our Rugs and Commercial division realized solid growth in the quarter. While cost inflation and the investments in NEXT impacted our results during the first quarter, we saw the first mitigating benefits from our price increases. We are focused and on track with implementing the various growth and cost saving initiatives identified in NEXT which will start benefiting our results later in the year and will bring a more significant improvement in earnings as from 2020.”