Donegal Investment Group plc (“Donegal Investment Group” or the “Company”)

30 March 2020

Trading & Other Update

In light of the current challenging and unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic the Group today is providing a trading update.  The Group’s trading businesses comprises of its Produce business, in particular IPM Potato Group, and its speciality dairy business, Nomadic. 

The Produce Business has delivered a solid performance in line with budget for the first half of the 2020 financial year.  We continue to monitor all key lead performance indicators in our Produce business and at this juncture we would anticipate that the business will continue to perform to plan for the second half of the 2020 financial year without any material disruption to its operations and impact on its financial performance. 

Nomadic, whilst performing to plan for the first half of the 2020 financial year and consistent with its prior years’ track record of continued top line revenue and profits growth, is now seeing significant reductions in its sales volumes.  A material part of Nomadic’s business is in the Food To Go category in the UK with its key customers having a presence in large urban centres as well as in high footfall transport hubs such as airports and rail stations.  The impact of UK Government policy restricting travel and movement has greatly reduced footfall in retail Food To Go channels.  Whilst there is significant uncertainty surrounding the length of the current crisis the Group would currently anticipate that together with the benefit of the first half’s strong financial performance and potential mitigating actions that can be taken, that Nomadic will make a positive, albeit significantly lower than 2019, contribution to full year Group financial performance and year-end cash position.

Relative to the scale of its operations and in particular it’s aforementioned trading businesses the Group remains in a strongly capitalised position which includes significant levels of cash liquidity, with net cash of €13.8m at 28 February 2020. 

The Company will as planned release its interim results for the six months ended 29 February 2020 on Thursday 30 April and will provide a further trading update then and as required going forward during the course of this current situation.  As such the Company entered into a close period today, Monday 30 March.

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