Van de Velde sales marginally up 1.1% in 2012

- Consolidated turnover rises by 1.1%.

- A decrease in wholesale turnover, a slight fall in gross margin and an important increase in costs, supporting long term growth, result in an ebitda decrease of 9.2%.

- The board of directors will propose to the general meeting of shareholders to maintain the dividend at € 2.15 per share.

- This confirms the confidence of the company in its growth and cash generation.

Turnover Development 2012

In 2012 Van de Velde achieved consolidated turnover growth of 1.1% (from € 179.8m to € 181.8m).

This turnover development can be explained as follows:

- A fall in wholesale turnover of 1.0%. This fall is mainly due to a decline in the first half of 2012; wholesale turnover increased by slightly more than 1.0% in the second half.

- A fall in the retail turnover of Intimacy of 12.6% in local currency and 5.3% in euro.

- In Continental Europe retail turnover of Rigby & Peller (formerly Oreia) rose by 7.0%, due to the opening of new stores in Germany and Spain.

- The contribution of retail turnover of Rigby & Peller in the UK was £ 9.2m (€ 11.3m) versus € 4.4m in 2011 (5 months).

Ebitda development

Consolidated EBITDA fell 9.2% to € 48.8m. This evolution is mainly attributable to a combination of the following factors:

- A fall in wholesale turnover with a slight fall in the gross margin due to rising stitching costs in China and higher stock depreciations (primarily raw materials).

- Planned investments in fixed costs to support long term growth (marketing, sales organisation, IT infrastructure and the further development of the retail organisation).

Impairment of goodwill and intangible assets with indefinite useful life

As reported earlier, the Andrés Sardá brand is suffering from the financial crisis in southern Europe, given that Spain is Andrés Sardá’s home market. Van de Velde continues to invest in this brand’s long-term future, for which additional marketing investments will be made in 2013.

The low point of 2010 is clearly behind us and all turnover figures since then have been higher than this low point. Andrés Sardá remains one of our three core brands, alongside Marie Jo/L’Aventure and PrimaDonna/Twist, and will be given the support it needs to achieve this ambition.

However, the development of turnover and the EBITDA contribution in 2012 and 2013 continue to be below expectations as set at the time of acquisition and as a consequence expections have been adjusted. This results in a partial impairment of € 8.0m of goodwill (€ 2.5m) and intangible assets with indefinite useful life (€ 5.5m) in connection with Andrés Sardá.