Anora: Earnings improvement in estimates, valuation neutral

Translation: Original published in Finnish on 01/21/2026 at 07:30 am EET

Anora's guidance for last year seems to hold, and we expect cost savings to support earnings improvement this year. We raise our estimates slightly in this report and the target price to EUR 3.8 (was EUR 3.5). The stock's valuation has risen to neutral (e.g. 2026 P/E 10x), so we lower our recommendation to Reduce (was Accumulate).

The 2025 guidance seems to hold, which points to an earnings improvement in Q4

Since last February, Anora has guided that the 2025 adj. EBITDA will be in a rather tight range of 70-75 MEUR. With January already well underway and last year's figures roughly known, we believe the company will reach its guidance. We marginally revised our estimates for 2025, but our adjusted EBITDA estimate remains at the lower end of the guidance range, at 70 MEUR.

For Q4, we expect a slight decrease in revenue to 200 MEUR (Q4’24: 205 MEUR), but a small improvement in adjusted EBITDA to 30 MEUR (Q4’24: 29 MEUR). Materialization of the full-year guidance thus points to earnings growth in Q4. We expect the dividend to remain at EUR 0.22, which corresponds to a 75% payout ratio in our estimates.

We expect savings to support the 2026 earnings improvement

Anora published its financial targets extending to 2028 at its CMD in November, which include an adjusted EBITDA of 85-90 MEUR. This effectively means a 15 MEUR improvement to the 2025 guidance range, or an annual improvement of 5 MEUR for the next three years. The company's targets include negative market development, which will be offset by cost savings. We believe that the annual personnel cost savings of 7 MEUR implemented at the end of last year will support earnings improvement in 2026. In this report, we raise our adjusted EBITDA forecast for 2026 to 74 MEUR. We believe the company will guide for an adjusted EBITDA of either 70-80 MEUR or 75-80 MEUR for this year, depending partly on last year's realized level. However, Anora's guidance has historically been optimistic, and it had to downgrade its guidance in 2023 and 2024.

Value creation still seems difficult

Although we believe Anora can improve its profitability by approximately 10 MEUR by 2028, the company's return on capital is roughly at the level of our required return in our estimates. The company's investment needs are small, and it continues to aim at freeing up working capital, which, in our forecasts, is only realized to a limited extent. The growth outlook for the longer term is also subdued, as we do not believe there is any growth in the alcohol market in sight. In an environment of flat or decreasing volumes, the company must continuously improve its efficiency just to compensate for normal cost inflation. Therefore, after the earnings improvement in the coming years, we estimate earnings and cash flow to remain at the same levels in 2028-2034.

Valuation is neutral

Anora's 2025-26 P/E ~10-12x is at the midpoint of our acceptable multiple range. Anora's expected return is roughly at the level of our required return, with the dividend playing a significant role. However, the modest growth profile and return on capital weaken the risk/reward ratio. Our DCF model indicates a value of EUR 3.8 per share, which is in line with our target price.