Glanbia upgraded its earnings and revenue guidance for 2025 in its third-quarter interim management statement (IMS), after seeing stronger-than-expected sales volumes across its business segments in the first nine months of the year.

The company’s key Optimum Nutrition revenue grew by 4.6% in the year to the end of September, including an acceleration of 14.3% in the third quarter.

Hugh McGuire, chief executive officer, said: “I am pleased to report that Glanbia delivered a good performance during the period, delivering Group like-for-like revenue growth of 3.3% across our portfolio of better nutrition brands and ingredients.

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“Our Performance Nutrition segment delivered a very strong performance in the third quarter, with our Optimum Nutrition and Isopure brands delivering double digit volume growth. Our Health and Nutrition and Dairy Nutrition segments also continued to perform well, with Health and Nutrition volumes showing strong growth in its priority end-use markets.”

He said he expects the company’s full-year earnings-per-share to be at the upper end of the guidance range of $1.30-$1.33 (€1.13-€1.16).

Whey

The company told investors that it has secured it whey needs through to the end of the first half of 2026. Mark Garvey, chief financial officer at Glanbia, said that whey costs remained elevated and that new supply which was expected to come on stream late this year and early next year has been somewhat delayed when compared to expectations earlier this year.

Garvey said that Glanbia has implemented pricing actions in 2025 and “anticipate further pricing actions in 2026 as demand for protein is expected to remain strong”.

SlimFast

During the period Glanbia completed the sale of its SlimFast and Body & Fit businesses. Speaking to investors after the release of the earnings update Garvey revealed that the total consideration for both brands was approximately $63m (€54.8m).

He said that there would be a further charge of approximately $30m (€26.1m) would be taken in the annual accounts on the sale of SlimFast.

This would take the total impairment on the SlimFast brand for Glanbia to approximately $121m (€105.4m).

Comment

Investor reaction to Wednesday’s interim management statement was positive, with the company’s share price rising more than 5% in the wake of the announced upgrade to earnings guidance for the full year.

While shareholders will be relieved to see shares trading at over €15 each, which is a welcome rebound from the low of €9.20 seen earlier this year, the longer-term performance of the company’s share price remains disappointing.

When Glanbia announced the purchase of SlimFast for $350m (€304m) in October 2018, the company’s share price was €14.50. In the seven years since it has traded above €19 and below €9, but is now back at the much the same level. Across that period, Glanbia has purchased approximately 50 million of its own shares. This means that while the market value of each share trading is little changed across the seven-year period, the overall value of the company calculated by market capital – the number of shares in issue multiplied by the price of those shares – has dropped considerably.

When SlimFast was purchased, the company had 296m shares trading at €14.50 each, giving a market capitalisation of €4.292bn. This week the company has 243.7m shares trading at €15 each, giving a market capitalisation of €3.655bn. That equates to a loss of value of over €600m in the period.

The company has an ongoing transformation programme, expected to lead to €50m in cost savings by 2027, and is also enaged in a simplification of its business structures. Glanbia will hold a Capital Markets Day on 19 November in London at which it will update investors in its medium-term growth agenda.

If that programme is successful and investors can be convinced about that growth agenda, then maybe the share price can finally break out of the range it has lived in for almost a decade.