(BFM Bourse) – Penalized by a turbulent environment, Piscines Desjoyaux published sharply lower results for its 2021/2022 financial year. For the future, the group says it is cautious given the current geopolitical and health context.
With more than 3 million swimming pools, France is the second most equipped country in the world behind the United States. And it was also in France that Piscines Desjoyaux was born in the mid-1960s. The beginning of this story is anecdotal. Gifted with his hands and good at masonry, Jean Desjoyaux built his first swimming pool for his children. Over time, he perfected his know-how and developed pipeless filtration, a major innovation for the time which contributed to the growth of the swimming pool market for individuals.
Piscine Desjoyaux is currently the world’s leading network for the construction of in-ground swimming pools with 182 dealerships in France and a presence in 80 countries. Listed on the Paris Stock Exchange since 1992, the family group has conquered households with its “8×4” swimming pools (8 meters by 4 meters). The brand is at the origin of the democratization of the swimming pool by marketing since 1994 a standard model adapted to the joys of water with the family. Having become the brand’s core business, the private family swimming pool offer ranges from entry-level ready-to-install kits to very well-equipped luxury swimming pools.
Fewer pools than expected
In the 2021/2022 financial year, Piscines Desjoyaux sold only 11,250 pools in total, a decrease of 14.3% over one year. In France, the number of “equivalent 8×4” pools recorded a significant drop of nearly 10%. The decline is more marked for export, the group having sold 20% less pools than in 2020/2021. The group is much less than its expectations formulated last June, a few weeks before the publication of its first half accounts, during an interview with our colleagues from ZoneBourse.
“We thought we would manage to maintain the number of pools sold at the record level of 2020/2021, that is to say 13,000. However, the weather was unfavorable last summer, the elections and the war in Ukraine with its inflationary effects weighed on the swimming pool market in France and throughout Europe at the start of 2022″, explained its manager Jean-Louis Desjoyaux to ZoneBourse.
In terms of turnover, this is down very slightly (-0.27%) at 160.54 million euros compared to 160.98 million euros for the 2020/2021 financial year. Despite a drop in the number of pools sold, the swimming pool specialist played on the pricing power effect. Over the financial year which has just ended, it has increased its prices and benefited from an increase in the “average basket with pools better equipped this year than in recent years”.
“The past financial year has in fact seen fewer projects come to fruition than during the previous financial year, explains Piscines Desjoyaux, who adds that they were of “higher quality”.
The group is therefore very much underperforming the swimming pool market. In 2021, professionals built +22% swimming pools compared to 2020, a year already growing by +27.5% in terms of swimming pools delivered, according to the latest figures from the Federation of Swimming Pool and Spa Professionals.
A “challenged” context
A little further down in the accounts, the group reported a deterioration in its profitability, evoking “a hectic context”. Piscines Desjoyaux thus noted a 20% drop over one year in its operating profit to 28.11 million euros. This development is the result of several factors, explains the swimming pool specialist, including the rise in raw materials, polypropylene and steel in the lead, in addition to the decrease in sales volumes. The corresponding margin has therefore eroded and at the end of August represented 17.46% of turnover against 21.75% for the previous financial year 2020/2021.
Net income group share did not escape the decline and amounted to 21.3 million euros, against 25.5 million euros last year, a decrease of 16.5%.
For the future, Piscines Desjoyaux does not want to get wet given the current geopolitical and health context. He explains that he is “cautious” and would be satisfied to date with a “consolidation of the latest achievements”. Piscines Desjoyaux intends to modernize and automate its logistics and industrial process. The group has entered an “investment phase” and thus plans to devote an envelope of 25 million euros spread over 2022 to 2024, against a normative annual investment of around 7 million euros”, explained Jean-Louis Desjoyaux at ZoneBourse.
On the stock market, Piscines Desjoyaux plunged more than 9% to 15 euros around 4:15 p.m., in reaction to this degraded publication. Over the whole of 2022, the stock fell by almost 50% after having been one of the flagship values of containment. Between March 2020 and the end of 2021, Piscines Desjoyaux had tripled in value on the Paris Stock Exchange, rising from 10 to 30 euros over the period.
Sabrina Sadgui – ©2022 BFM Bourse
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