HelloFresh Achieves Milestone FY22

Following several ups and downs in its third quarter, HelloFresh bounced back to deliver impressive fourth quarter and full fiscal 2022 results. The global meal kit company’s revenue grew 27% year-over-year in FY22 to an all-time high of more than $8 billion U.S. dollars, and the company shipped a record 1 billion meals during the period.

HelloFresh’s Q4 saw 19% year-over-year revenue growth to more than $2 billion. Adjusted EBITDA expanded in both absolute and relative terms to nearly $170 million, corresponding to an 8.5% margin. The company’s contribution margin expanded to 25.5 % for the full year and even more so for Q4, despite record levels of inflation in labor and ingredients.

Customers showed consistent high engagement during fiscal 2022 with an expansion of the average order value by 10%. FY22 also brought a more than $500 million adjusted EBITDA with a margin of 6.3%.

"2022 presented us with a whole new set of challenges that our teams worked very hard on to tackle,” said Dominik Richter, group CEO and co-founder. “While we continue to face a difficult macro environment, we still posted healthy growth rates and maintained strong levels of profitability. We also successfully managed to relentlessly mitigate inflationary pressures and ensure that our prices remain competitive compared to grocery stores.”

Continued Richter: “Additionally, we meaningfully increased average order value in the first year post pandemic and launched our services not only in Ireland and Spain as new geographies, but also expanded our US brands Green Chef to the Netherlands and Factor to Canada. All in all, I am very pleased how we navigated an unprecedented macro environment and continued to innovate on the customer’s behalf during 2022."

HelloFresh is offering a preliminary outlook for 2023, anticipating 2-10% in constant-currency revenue growth, and about $480 million to $570 million on group level in adjusted EBITDA. The company will work toward further strengthening its customer proposition by investing in faster delivery and a broader assortment of meals, while also expanding into additional adjacent products through the launch and expansion of HelloFresh Market around the globe.

The company expects those moves, along with a further buildout of its ready-to-eat vertical, to positively impact average order values and increase average orders.

“Relentlessly focusing on expanding our customer proposition and providing our customers with an even better experience and even more meal solutions to choose from will enhance the profitability of our meal kit business,” said Richter. “At the same time we remain very excited about the growth prospects of our RTE vertical. I am confident we are well set up for future growth given our diversified portfolio of geographies and brands and heading in the right direction of becoming the world’s leading integrated food solutions group.”

Berlin-based HelloFresh operates in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Australia, Austria, Switzerland, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, France, Denmark, Norway, Italy and Japan. With U.S. offices in New York, Chicago, and Boulder, Colo., the company is No. 50 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2022 list of the top retailers of food and consumables in North America.