ELLWANGEN (dpa-AFX) - The crisis-ridden battery manufacturer Varta has closed 2022 with a bitter loss. Below the line, the troubled company made a loss of around 200 million euros last year, as it announced in Ellwangen on Tuesday evening. This was due to an unscheduled write-down on property, plant and equipment in the lithium-ion button cell division, which had once brought Varta so much growth. In 2021, the SDax-listed company had still made a profit of just under 126 million euros. Varta is burdened by high energy and raw material costs, among other things, and the group had recently initiated a comprehensive savings and restructuring program.

In day-to-day business, Varta performed somewhat better than recently feared. In terms of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization adjusted for special effects, the company exceeded its annual forecast, which was cut back in November, and achieved an operating result of 69.5 million euros. This is a significant drop from the previous year's figure of 283 million euros. Most recently, Varta had only forecast 55 to 60 million. However, the fact that the forecast was exceeded was due to one-off effects in the region of 10 million euros, mainly from currency conversions. Sales amounted to 806.9 million euros - also a significant step back from the previous year's figure of 902.9 million euros. With these sales, the Group just reached the lower end of the forecast range.

Varta presented the figures for the previous year relatively late, originally scheduled for April 26. Varta had justified this with a change of auditors from KPMG to PWC. Many processes in the reporting and auditing process therefore reportedly had to be relaunched./men/zb

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