Source: Inderes

Translation: Original published in Finnish on 7/29/2026 at 7:50 am EEST.

HKFoods will report its Q2 results on Wednesday, August 5, at 8:30 am EEST. We expect the result to improve year-on-year, partly due to the early start of the grilling season driven by favorable weather. Cost pressures caused by the Middle East conflict are not likely to have had a very significant impact yet.

Growth through both prices and volume

We estimate Q2 revenue to have increased by 3% year-on-year to 253 MEUR. This includes growth from both price increases and volumes. Volume growth is supported by, among other things, the good weather in May, which has encouraged consumers to start grilling earlier than last year. In addition, HKFoods benefits from growth-oriented investments made in recent years, for example, in ready meals and cooked meat products. The price component is particularly affected by beef products, the price of which has risen over the past year.

Early spring supports Q2 results

We forecast adjusted EBIT to have strengthened to 7.1 MEUR (up 9% year-on-year). This would correspond to an adjusted EBIT margin of 2.8%, a moderate improvement compared to last year's level (Q2'25: 2.6%). We have assumed in our forecasts that transportation and packaging costs have started to rise towards the end of the quarter due to the conflict in the Middle East. However, the impact of cost pressure on the Q2 quarter is likely to remain limited. A favorable grilling season has provided a tailwind for profitability, so we believe an even more significant improvement in earnings than our forecast is possible. Atria's reported earnings development for Q2 (adj. EBIT grew by 17%) also points to favorable conditions.

Prerequisites for earnings growth have moderately improved

HKFoods guides for comparable EBIT to increase from 2025 (34.1 MEUR), and we expect the company to reiterate this guidance in connection with its Q2 report. We estimate that the earnings growth expectations are positively impacted by the growth investments completed by the company in the previous year, and by the removal of certain operating environment challenges compared to 2025 (e.g. strikes and the stabilization of beef product margins due to price increases). In our view, uncertainty surrounding the conditions for earnings growth tightened in early spring as the situation in the Middle East escalated. However, oil prices have developed more moderately than expected and economic development has been quite positive, so the risk of a strong inflation shock has decreased, although there is still uncertainty associated with H2. Our forecast assumes only moderate earnings growth (adj. EBIT 2026e: 35.1 MEUR), but favorable grilling weather in Q2 may have improved the outlook for the rest of the year.