MILAN, Sep 4 (Class Editori) - LU-VE, one of the world leaders in the production of heat exchangers and refrigeration systems, headquartered in Uboldo (Varese), still has India, China, Russia and the USA as the strategic markets that will give many opportunity to grow to the company.
“India is a project that started in 2016 and is going very well. We acquired a company that is a real gem, it had a 18 million turnover in October and this year will exceed 40 million,” explained Matteo Liberali, ceo of the specialized company in a meeting with investors during the Italian Equity Week. LU-VE has production facilities in China, India, Sweden, Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia, in addition to Italy.
LU-VE India acquired 95% of the capital of Spirotech, an Indian company that deals with the production and marketing of heat exchangers. The Equity Value attributed to 100% of Spirotech was confirmed at 33.6 million euros.
In the financial year ended in March 2016, Spirotech recorded a turnover of approximately 21 million, with an Ebitda of 4.5 million and a net profit of 2.2 million. The net financial position as at 31st July 2016 was of around +0.8 million.
“India remains a country with a huge potential in our strategic plan. Its growth scale will be slighlty slower compared to what could have been expected, as the consumption habits in large retailers are growing differently. In the medium term it remains a great opportunity,” added Liberali, who together with his father and uncle Iginio and Fabio controls just over 50% of the capital.
On the other hand, the US is also the other great frontier of development. In that market, LU-VE acquired a company that billed 10 million in June last year, and this year it will close with a turnover of 15-16 million, according to the manager. “We are building a new 25,000-square-meter facility in Jacksonville (Texas), the US is the world's largest refrigeration market so we have plenty of room for growth there too” added Liberali.
“In the second part of the year there will be some uncertainty in the general context, but we see that Russia, China and Europe, including Italy and apart from England for the well-known events linked to Brexit, are growing,” specified the Ceo. “The only slightly negative signal, which is an alarm bell, is the application for refrigerant trucks; but for us they weigh little” he concluded.
For the LU-VE Group, 2018 was very positive for the business trend. In fact, for the first time in history, consolidated turnover has exceeded the threshold of 300 million euros (slightly beyond the initial budget forecasts), reaching a value of almost 307 million with a growth of 13.6% compared to the previous year (+11.7% on a comparable basis), thanks to lively demand and the increasingly strong commercial and industrial presence in terms of both territorial coverage and penetration of different application segments.
But the real dimensional leap should happen this year thanks to the acquisition of December - but operational since last April - of the activity of Alfa Laval Air, which at the end of 2018 were worth a turnover of 108 million with an ebitda margin of 9.5% and a constant growth over the last three years of 9% year on year.
Alfa Laval Air brought in addition to a management team with solid international experience, three other state-of-art production plants in Italy, Finland and India, with 400 employees overall.
Analysts have forecasted that this year turnover should rise to 390 million euros, with an ebitda of 45 million, and reach over 450 million in 2021 with a gross margin of 62 million.
Meanwhile, as of June 30th, product sales had risen to 183.8 million compared to the same period of 2018, 21.9% more thanks to the acquisition, while the order book had reached 73.4 million compared to the same period of the 2018, with 80.4% growth.
(Source:Class Editori)
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