Leading European bike business Accell Group NV – which owns brands such as Raleigh and Van Nicholas, alongside Koga and Lapierre amongst others – has reported strong revenue and profit in the first quarter of 2013, when compared to the same period in 2012.
Despite a protracted winter in Europe, the company reported that turnover has risen organically, whilst also increasing as a result of the acquisition of Raleigh in 2012. Operational profit increased in the first months of 2013 as a result of both organic growth as well as the addition of Raleigh.
In addition to bicycle turnover, turnover of bicycle components and accessories also increased. The average price per bicycle increased in organic terms.
René Takens, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Accell Group said, “The first months of the year have shown us that the general bicycle trends are still positive. However the long winter period and reluctance in willingness to buy among consumers has resulted in a late start of the bicycle season and lower than expected sales.”
Takens continued, “Regarding the sports and traditional bicycles we expect to catch up on the lag in supply in the coming months. We therefore maintain our outlook for 2013 and expect a further increase in turnover and net operating profit, barring unforeseen circumstances.”
The integration of Raleigh and ‘development of synergy projects’ is in full swing. In the US, the Raleigh America, SBS, Currie Technologies and Lapierre North America subsidiaries will cooperate more closely under Accell Group North America.
In addition, as recently announced, the manufacturing and assembly activities in Canada will be ceased (at the end of the current bicycle season), after which Accell’s operations will be switched to multi channel distribution.
Meanwhile, the Raleigh distributor in Finland has been acquired and will be integrated in the Accell Group subsidiary Tunturi Hellberg. To strengthen the Raleigh components and accessories activities in the UK, the activities of the XLC distributor have been acquired in order to ‘realize a broader distribution in the UK’.
