Performance 2016

Sales revenue amounted to EUR 1.258 billion. This is 2.7% more than in 2015 and consistent with the Gorenje Group sales plans.

We generated EUR 8.4 million of net profit (budgeted: EUR 7.6 million), EBITDA of EUR 87.2 million, and EBITDA margin of 6.9%. EBIT amounted to EUR 40.2 million.

We improved the net financial debt to EBITDA ratio, cutting it from 4.1 in 2015 to 3.9 in 2016. Thus, we decreased Gorenje Group's relative debt.

Investment into new appliance development was stepped up to EUR 32.3 million, which accounts for 2.6 percent of total Gorenje Group sales revenue. We also increased our marketing and sales promotion investments to 2.1% of Gorenje Group's total sales revenue.

In terms of sales, operations and performance in the core activity of home products were successful in 2016. Compared to 2015, we saw 3.4-percent sales revenue growth in our core activity Home (EUR 1.092 billion), in all geographical segments and with all brands.

Consistently with the strategic plan, we drove up our sales of appliances with higher value added.
This includes:

• premium appliances (4.3% growth in volume terms) which already account for 27.3-percent share of our total home appliance sales revenue; and
• innovative appliances, with sales up 14.5 percent in volume terms; their share in total sales revenue increased to 10.7 percent (+1.1 percentage points relative to 2015).

We efficiently managed our resources with a variety of measures including changes in technological processes, organization of operations, and responsible treatment of hazardous chemicals and packaging. The amount of disposed waste increased slightly compared to preceding years as a result of higher number of employees and higher use of stainless steel protected with a non-recyclable foil.

At some companies, water consumption was increased due to technical tests upon introduction of new products; at others, it was decreased as a result of launch of technological lines with water-efficient rinsing and other organizational measures. We cut our power consumption, which is a result of optimized use of energy in production processes. Carbon footprint, measured in kg of CO₂ emissions per product, was somewhat lower in 2016 than in the year before. We were dedicated intensively to adjustments to the requirements of the new ISO 14001:2015 standard.

Sixty-eight percent out of 10,889 employees were involved in training and education processes. We carried out around 200,000 training and education hours (19.3 hours per employee). Key topics of training and education courses included digitization, development, production quality assurance, purchasing, environmental management, technologies, and work procedures.

At the Corporate University of Gorenje, 25 participants of the 2nd International Business Academy of Gorenje (IBAG) completed their training. We carried out the annual conference of the Executive business Academy for 55 managers from across the Gorenje Group. The first generation of the Gorenje Create Academy (GCA) presented modern approaches and improvement proposals for the new product development process. We established the Digital Business Academy of Gorenje (DBAG) to develop knowledge and skills required to accomplish our goal related to digitization.

Despite the increased number of employees (530 newly hired employees), we recorded 23 percent fewer accidents than in the year before, which is most likely a result of the activities carried out in 2015, called the Year of Occupational Safety and Health.