Iceland - comment

At first glance, Iceland have beaten our expectations, mainly due to higher top line.  The Company are presenting their numbers to the market this morning in person, which we will attend so further details may emerge.  We have some queries on Working capital as we had expected an inflow for Q4 and overall inflow of £17m for FY23.  Iceland shows an outflow of £26m which is the driving force for our year-end cash to be off by c.£40m.  The Company explain the Working Capital movement stating it is due to the timing of payments and stock movements. Iceland add they have seen a partial reversal of this in Q1.

Iceland have increased their revolver to £50m but as of year-end, this was undrawn.  More importantly, they have given some flash numbers for Q1, with EBITDA £34m (higher than Q1 23 at £17m and our model of £18m.  The presentation ends with the mandatory comment about the 2025 Senior Notes and the Company evaluating timing etc.  

We aim to update our model this week after the meeting.