Nomad Foods is home to Captain Birdseye, one of the most famous advertising characters in UK food. For years, the European frozen-foods group behind brands like Birds Eye and Iglo has enjoyed some pretty smooth sailing, with sales and earnings growing annually since its formation in mid-2015.
However, 2025 has thrown up some choppy waters and, speaking at an investor conference in the US this week, Nomad Foods’ senior management set out how they plan to get the business on a more even keel.
“For nine years, we’ve been able to increase sales, EBITDA, EPS every year,” Nomad Foods CEO Stéfan Descheemaeker told the Barclays Global Consumer Staples conference in Boston on Wednesday (3 September). “But not ten years. As you can imagine, it’s frustrating.”
As Descheemaeker sought to underline to the audience in Boston, the first nine years of Nomad Foods’ existence haven’t been “easy” (he listed some of the macro challenges that have beset the business and, in some ways, the entire sector in Europe: Brexit, Covid-19, supply-chain upheaval, inflation sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine).
But the first sign that Nomad Foods might this year end its record of sales and earnings growth came in May when the Findus maker lowered its forecasts for annual revenue and adjusted EBITDA. Announcing its first-quarter results, the company cautioned its revenue and adjusted EBITDA might now come in flat year-on-year.
In August, Nomad Foods cut its revenue and adjusted EBITDA forecasts for 2025 again. The fish-fingers and frozen chicken manufacturer warned revenue may be flat but could fall 2%. The business was more certain on its adjusted EBITDA, guiding to a decline of 3-7%.
“This year is proving to be more challenging than expected,” Descheemaeker said at the time. “Record-setting warm weather across many western European markets has disrupted consumer behaviour, leading to changes in retailer merchandising strategies and contributing to volume declines, particularly within our savoury frozen categories.”
In Boston this week, the Nomad Foods chief again noted the weather had hit parts of the frozen-foods category in Europe and the company’s sales. But, rightly, he added: “I think that it would be wrong and probably not helpful to attribute our disappointing performance this year with the weather only.”
Descheemaeker and CFO Ruben Baldew ran through how the group plans to boost sales and bolster earnings. Nomad Foods will pick up its efforts on innovation, Descheemaeker said. The company’s “renovation” of products – improving recipes – takes in about 10% of its portfolio each year but the company wants to do more on product launches. “Innovation is really starting to ramp up,” Descheemaeker said.
Nomad Foods, which operates across Europe, will look to take products that have had success in one market into new territories, he added, pointing to the frozen-chicken products the company sells in the UK.
“We know that we can develop this chicken in other countries like Italy or Germany. That’s obviously a recipe for lower failure because innovation always comes with a certain proportion of failure,” he said. “By doing this, we know that we have a proven success in a country [and] by adapting, obviously, the recipe here and there, we know that we’re going to increase the success rate.”
Nomad Foods generates the bulk of its sales through grocery retail, with more than 90% of its business via that channel. Descheemaeker said he saw opportunities in the foodservice market, citing the recent launch of a plant-based nugget with McDonald’s in Nordic markets.
“We also believe that, if it’s successful with McDonald’s in these countries, it will spread to other countries,” he said. “We also believe that foodservice should grow faster in the future. We have some great plans in some countries, like in southern Europe and in the Adriatics, where we have a fantastic route to market that is unparalleled and something that is unique and that we think we should leverage further.”
The push on innovation will be in part funded by intensified efforts on costs. Ahead of the Barclays conference, the company set out plans for “accelerated efficiency savings” from 2026 to 2028. Nomad Foods pinned the figure at €200m ($235m) and said it was eyeing savings in procurement, logistics and overheads.
Baldew underlined the company wasn’t looking for €200m of “incremental” savings, noting it had already found €160m in recent years. “If you look at that over the next three years, it’s a cumulative increase of €40m, which is a bit less than €15m per annum,” he said.
Nonetheless, Baldew said Nomad Foods’ moves on costs were “about being competitive” and would help the company re-invest in other areas of the business.
“We’re going to use those savings to reinvest in our brands, in product quality, in renovation, in innovation, in communication but also in shop-floor activities,” he said. “By [doing] that, we should be able to have competitive positions in our healthy category and have growth.”
Of particular interest to suppliers will be Nomad Foods plans to double its savings from procurement. “We already had the centralised procurement organisation but, in the next three years, we’re going to work further on supplier reduction, supplier rationalisation and having more leverage there,” Baldew added.
The company’s manufacturing network will also be a focus. Nomad Foods shut a factory in the Nordic regions in the second quarter and, while Baldew didn’t specify if more closures were in the offing, it was clear the group is scrutinising its production footprint, including weighing up all its plants.
“Mainly for the big factories, we’re going to do cost optimisation to make sure we have the right capacity and cost level for the right volume,” Baldew said.
He also noted that around a fifth of Nomad Foods’ output is from co-packers. The company wants to bring some of that in-house to make better use of its own sites.
Overheads, meanwhile, will be examined. Up to 2024, Nomad Foods’ overheads rose 8% a year (and by 5% excluding M&A). This year, overheads have started to come down, although how Nomad Foods has achieved that may raise eyebrows. “Those savings are actually centred around two things,” Baldew said. “One is a simplification of the organisation and, secondly, it’s a rigid approach on all the discretionary spend and having a zero-based budgeting approach. We will continue to drive that also in the next three years.”
Alongside the announcement on savings, Nomad Foods also said it is now targeting “compound annual adjusted EBITDA growth” of 1-3% over the 2026 to 2028 period. Two years ago, the company had set a medium-term target for annual adjusted EBITDA growth of 5-7%.
The group made no mention of new medium-term targets for revenue and EPS. Previously, they had been set at 3-4% for revenue and 7-9% for adjusted EPS.
Descheemaeker was asked if investors should view the 3-4% revenue objective as no longer achievable.
“No, it doesn’t mean that,” Descheemaeker said. “I think it just means that at this stage, first, we’re not very pleased with missing our targets. What we want to do is also to create, obviously, the right expectation so that people are less anxious from that standpoint.
“But, at the same time, we know that it’s volatile. Sometimes it might go up faster. Sometimes it might be a bit lower. That’s why we want to create, obviously, the – let’s say – space to get to obviously the right business model.”
It’s clear Nomad Foods is working hard to do that.
““We’re going to be stronger” – Nomad Foods sets out stall after choppy 2025” was originally created and published by Just Food, a GlobalData owned brand.
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