Glanbia announced its financial results for the third quarter on Wednesday, in which it said its performance for the year has been in line with expectations and that full-year earnings continue to be on track for 5% to 8% adjusted earnings per share growth.

The company also announced its intention to create a new operating model, separating its Glanbia Nutritional business into two new segments - health and nutrition and dairy nutrition.

The dairy segment will consist of Glanbia’s US cheese and whey ingredients businesses. The health and nutrition segment will encompass premix solutions and flavours platforms.

The new operating model will be accompanied by what Glanbia is calling “a group-wide transformation programme”, which the company said will focus on identifying opportunities to enhance productivity and drive efficiencies across operations.

Share buyback

Glanbia also announced a further €50m share buyback to commence in early 2025. The company has already purchased €88.6m of shares this year as part of the €100m buyback programmes which are currently ongoing.

Chief executive officer Hugh McGuire said: “Glanbia continued to deliver good momentum during the third quarter, driven by revenue growth across our portfolio of better nutrition brands and ingredients.

"Volume growth was driven by our protein growth brands Optimum Nutrition and Isopure, as well as premix and protein solutions.”

In a post-announcement call with analysts, McGuire was asked how Glanbia is set for a world which may have more trade tariffs in the wake of the US election result.

He said that they were waking up to the “interesting news this morning”, but that the company has a good global spread of production facilities and had reacted to tariff changes in 2018.

He added that being part of a global business is being able to react to changes in the business environment.

Shares in Glanbia were little changed in the wake of the announcements, trading at €15.54 by 9am.