Provisional sales 2014

Continued solid organic growth: +4.9% in the fourth quarter

Sales performance

The global macro-economic environment in 2014 was marked by weak growth, underpinned by a climate of uncertainty or turbulence in several emerging countries and critical situations in certain regions of the world. It was also a year of extreme volatility on the foreign exchange markets with many currencies showing persistent weakness against the euro. The situation worsened in the fourth quarter when the rouble collapsed, while the US dollar and Chinese were getting stronger.

In a highly competitive and promotion-driven environment, the small household equipment market continued to grow overall but performed unevenly from one country to another.

Groupe SEB’s sales rose by 2.2% in 2014 as reported and by 4.6% like-for-like. As expected, organic growth was strong, led by positive contributions from substantially all of the Group’s main markets – except for Russia and Japan – and by innovation, which once again confirmed its role as a key growth driver. Business was vibrant in the second half of the year and momentum increased in the fourth quarter, with sales rising by 4.9% like-for-like, as in 2013, driven notably by France, the United States, Brazil and China.

Currencies had a negative impact throughout 2014, reducing sales by €132 million over the year and €6 million in the fourth quarter alone. This was mainly due to the yen, rouble, real, Ukrainian hryvnia and Turkish lira, while the yuan and dollar generated positive currency effects in the latter part of the year. Moreover, changes in the scope of consolidation added €33 million to sales for the year (including €10 million in the fourth quarter), corresponding to the consolidation as from 1 January 2014 of Groupe SEB India (formerly Maharaja Whiteline) and Canada-based Coranco.