Gerresheimer ETR: GXI reported preliminary first-quarter 2026 results that showed modest revenue growth but lower earnings as the packaging and drug-delivery company prioritized cash preservation, reduced capital spending and limited inventory buildup.
Revenue increased by €5 million year over year, while adjusted EBITDA declined by €15 million. Free cash flow before mergers and acquisitions improved by nearly €110 million to negative €32 million, which Chief Financial Officer Wolf Lehmann said was the company’s best first-quarter cash flow result since 2019.
Management said the first quarter is typically its weakest period of the year and that production adjustments aimed at controlling inventory temporarily reduced capacity utilization and earnings, particularly in the Moulded Glass business. The company expects results to improve through the year, with the second half stronger than the first half.
Portfolio sales and refinancing plans
Gerresheimer has signed agreements to sell its Centor and Primary Packaging Plastics, or PPP, businesses to an affiliate of funds advised by Apax Partners. The transaction covers 15 PPP production sites in nine countries and Centor’s U.S. production site, and is based on an enterprise value of about €1.5 billion.
The company expects the Centor transaction to close by November 2026 and the PPP sale to close in the first half of 2027. Management said proceeds from the divestitures are expected to reduce leverage to below three times net debt to EBITDA on a sustainable basis.
Lehmann said Gerresheimer had net financial debt of close to €2 billion and liquidity of €342 million at the end of the quarter. The company is working with Lazard and its lenders on a full debt refinancing, which it expects to complete in connection with the closing of the divestitures.
Management also reiterated its intention to prepare the Moulded Glass segment for a sale, though it said more operational work is required before a divestiture can be completed. The company described its portfolio strategy as “grow, fix, sell,” with growth focused on Medical Systems, Syringe Systems and Tubular Glass North America; restructuring focused on Tubular Glass Europe; and Moulded Glass designated for improvement, carve-out and eventual sale.
Segment performance
Containment & Delivery Systems reported organic revenue growth of 8.8%, with revenue rising to €296 million from €281 million a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA increased to €61 million from €51 million. The growth was led by Medical Systems, including the ramp-up of the Peachtree City facility and performance at Eastern European plants. PPP and Centor were broadly stable year over year.
Achim Schalk, a member of Gerresheimer’s management board, said the company has seen quarter-to-quarter improvement at Peachtree City and recently recorded “record months.” He said the company expects the site’s second-quarter performance to exceed the first quarter and the second half to improve from the first half.
In Primary Injectable Solutions, revenue rose to €101 million from €94 million, representing organic growth of 14.2%. Strong Syringe Systems growth more than offset lower revenue in Tubular Glass Europe and Asia. Adjusted EBITDA fell by €1 million to €6 million, reflecting lower contributions from the European and Asian tubular-glass operations.
Gerresheimer has changed leadership in Tubular Glass Europe and started a restructuring plan centered on footprint optimization, operational improvements and selling, general and administrative cost reductions. Schalk said the European tubular-glass operation has a relatively complex footprint of smaller plants, while the business has performed more successfully in North America and China.
Moulded Glass revenue declined to €144 million from €160 million, while adjusted EBITDA fell to €6 million from €32 million. The decline reflected a furnace repair in Chicago Heights, lower sales of pharma containers and liquid products, and weak cosmetics demand. Lehmann said the earnings decline was compounded by lower inventory production and temporary production halts, which resulted in underutilized assets.
The company has initiated the closure of its Chicago Heights plant and targets completing the process during the fourth quarter of 2026. Gerresheimer is also qualifying U.S. customers for supply from Type I glass plants in Italy and India. Daniel Winkler has been appointed CEO of the Moulded Glass business to lead its transformation.
Cash measures and transformation targets
Gerresheimer reduced net capital expenditures to €56 million from €113 million in the prior-year quarter, with the company separately describing total capital expenditures of €57 million compared with €130 million a year earlier. About €37 million of first-quarter spending was allocated to growth projects.
Inventory increased by €5 million, compared with a €46 million increase in the first quarter of 2025. Receivables fell by €46 million, while payables decreased by €54 million, partly because fewer reverse-factoring lines were available following the company’s lower credit rating at the beginning of the year. Net interest payments were about €60 million during the quarter, based on an average interest rate of roughly 4.4% on €2.2 billion of gross debt.
The company continues to target €50 million to €70 million of annualized EBITDA improvement from its transformation program. Management expects roughly half of the underlying run-rate savings to be implemented in 2026 and the remainder in 2027, with the full financial benefit expected in 2028. Lehmann said the target corresponds to roughly 250 to 400 basis points of margin improvement on the smaller post-divestiture portfolio.
Gerresheimer did not restate its full-year guidance during the call. Lehmann said there had been no change to guidance and that it remained intact.
Reporting review and leadership change
The company expects to publish final first-quarter financial statements in September after completing additional review procedures, supported by external advisers. Those procedures include the presentation and disclosure of discontinued operations related to Centor and PPP, as well as the regular assessment of potential impairment indicators. Management said any potential impairment adjustment would be non-cash.
Gerresheimer also said its ongoing BaFin investigation prevents it from commenting on timing, though it is cooperating with authorities. The company previously corrected its first-quarter 2025 figures, reducing reported revenue by €1 million to €519 million and adjusted EBITDA by €10 million to €81 million.
Uwe Röhrhoff stepped down as interim CEO for personal reasons. Management said the supervisory board is responsible for the search for a successor.
About Gerresheimer (ETR:GXI)
Gerresheimer AG, together with its subsidiaries, manufactures and sells medicine packaging, drug delivery devices, and solutions in Germany and internationally. It operates through three divisions: Plastics & Devices, Primary Packaging Glass, and Advanced Technologies. The company offers prefillable syringes, plastic and glass packaging solutions, vials, glass cartridges and ampoules, bottles and containers, and glass bottles and jars, as well as caps, closures, applicators, and accessories; development, industrialization and contract manufacturing of drug delivery programs; project and quality management; and drug delivery systems, including inhalers, injection/auto injectors, pen injectors, infusion systems, and inhalation assessment, autoinjector, and other services.
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