Symrise's organic growth slows down to 1% in fourth quarter

By Patricia Weiss and Anastasiia Kozlova

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German flavour and fragrance maker Symrise on Thursday reported a clear slowdown in its fourth quarter organic growth, missing market expectations, in a sign of sales normalisation after a period of strong growth especially in its scents unit.

Symrise, whose fragrances go into the perfumes of French luxury giants LVMH and Kering, said organic sales grew only 1% in the final quarter of 2024, compared with 9.5% growth a year earlier.

Analysts on average were expecting 4.8% growth for the quarter, a Vara consensus poll showed.

Morgan Stanley analysts said in a note that the notable slowdown, especially compared to the high bar set by Swiss peer Givaudan last week, would likely weigh on Symrise's shares.

The shares were trading 0.6% lower by 1022 GMT, after rising 4% in early Frankfurt trade on the back of a slight consensus beat in annual sales and core profit margin.

Givaudan's and Symrise's shares have fallen more than 14% and 18% respectively in the past four months, reflecting market uncertainty as growth rates began to normalize against a tougher comparison base that will also affect the companies in the coming quarters.

However, analysts at Vontobel said after Givaudan's earnings release on Friday that they did not expect an abrupt slowdown in business growth after the "stellar" development seen last year.

Symrise posted revenue of 4.99 billion euros ($5.20 billion) and a core profit margin of 20.7% for the full year 2024.

It also narrowed its 2025 margin guidance to around 21% from the previously announced 20-23% range and reiterated its organic growth target of between 5% and 7%.

($1 = 0.9602 euros)

(Reporting by Patricia Weiss in Frankfurt and Anastasiia Kozlova in Gdansk; editing by Milla Nissi)