Continuing to invest into long term growth despite a challenging business environment

Penta has reported a net profit of €483 million for the financial year 2022. The consistent profits generated allow the group to continue to invest significantly into its portfolio of companies with Capital Expenditures totalling €806 million during 2022. Currently the Group employs more than 40,000 people and paid a total of €607 million in income tax and other social contributions.

“2022 was another challenging year on  the geopolitical and human front with the tragedy of the Ukraine war, which exacerbated the already strained macroeconomic environment causing excessive inflation and very significant rises in interest rates. Despite this difficult environment the robustness of our portfolio has allowed us to deliver excellent financial results and at the same time continue to invest into our companies to  improve our products and services to our customers”, explained Iain Child, Managing Partner of Penta.  

Contributing significantly to Penta Group earnings in 2022 was  the Dr. Max pharmacy chain, Slovalco and Empik. Other solid contributions came from Penta Real Estate, Primabanka & Privatbanka, and Iglotex. Fortuna Entertainment Group made an admirable recovery from the previously COVID effected years and produced a record result in 2022.  Penta´s  media companies (VLM and NMH)  demonstrated strong resilience against soaring paper and distribution costs and successfully defend their topline.  The main negative impact on the 2022 results related to the Dôvera health insurance business due to the unstable regulatory environment.

Penta Real Estate sold 377 residential units in 2022 and a further 1,765 units are under construction (Bory Bývanie, Nuselský pivovar, Nová Waltrovka, Victoria Palace, Juliska, Pri Mýte, Vila Chittussi). In the first quarter of 2022, Penta concluded the divestiture of €224 million of assets to Alto Real Estate (Jozef Oravkin) in Slovakia. At the same time it invested €350 million into its Real Estate business acquiring new land mark developments in Prague and Bratislava as well as completing existing projects.  At the end of 2022 Penta Real Estate reported assests  of more than €1.16 billion.

“Our investment programs in 2022 exceeded €800 million. Dr. Max continued its expansion throughout its Central European core markets and Italy totalling €160 million in 2022 principally focused on logistic warehousing capacity and new retail openings. We successfully expanded our Czech healthcare businesses and completed the majority of our investment into Nemocnica Bory in Slovakia (which opened at the end of March 2023) investing €146 million into these projects in 2022. In the fourth quarter of 2022 we completed the sale of 51% of EMPIK group in Poland to management which marked a new beginning in the long history of this Polish  iconic brand, “ Iain Child added.