For the financial year ending 31 December 2025, Ardagh Group is forecasting consolidated revenues of $9.6bn, up on 2024 ($9.1bn) and broadly stable compared with previous financial years, following the strong growth recorded between 2021 and 2022. Over five years, the group’s revenues have risen from $7.6bn in 2021 to almost $9.6bn in 2025, reflecting growth in value mainly driven by increased volumes and contractual cost pass-through mechanisms.
“The year 2025 has proved transformational for Ardagh Group. The comprehensive recapitalisation agreement reached in mid-November, with the strong support of our financial creditors, puts Ardagh Group’s financial position on a sustainable footing. Since the completion of the restructuring under a new ownership structure, significant changes have been made to the group’s governance and executive structures. Our focus is now fully on developing plans to maximise value for Ardagh Group’s new shareholders. It is early in the process, but by creating value across the group’s businesses, we believe we will be able to identify strategic options to achieve this objective,” commented Mark Porto, executive chair of Ardagh Group.
Ardagh remains loss-making on a net basis
“We are currently in the process of detailing and resourcing our action plans and will communicate further when these are more advanced. However, we are very encouraged by the operating performance to date and confident in Ardagh Group’s prospects. Each of the Glass Packaging and Metal Packaging businesses delivered better than expected adjusted Ebitda in the fourth quarter, while the group’s net debt and strong liquidity position also proved better than anticipated,” detailed the group’s executive chair.
Adjusted Ebitda will reach $1.41bn in 2025, compared with $1.27bn in 2024 and $1.30bn in 2023. This level is higher than that seen in 2021 ($1.25bn), but is part of a trajectory that is broadly stable over the period, with margins varying between 13.8% and 16.4% depending on the financial year. In 2025, the adjusted Ebitda margin will be 14.7%, an improvement on 2024 (13.9%).
Despite this operational improvement, Ardagh is still making a net loss. The net loss will be $952m in 2025, compared with $597m in 2024 and $495m in 2023. Over the period 2021–2025 as a whole, the group has not returned to profit, with results still penalised by high financial charges and recurring exceptional items.
Debt is doing (a little) better
Debt is the focal point of the financial reading. At the end of 2025, net debt will be reduced to $8.5bn, compared with $9.4bn at the end of 2024 and a peak of $9.5bn in 2023. This compares with $5.8bn at the end of 2021. The net debt to adjusted Ebitda ratio improves to 6.0x in 2025, after exceeding 7x in 2023 and 2024, but remains significantly higher than in 2021 (4.7x).
This relative improvement is directly linked to the recapitalisation finalised in November 2025. The operation, legally structured from Luxembourg, took the form of a debt-for-equity swap resulting in an indirect change of control of the parent company.
Ardagh Group, incorporated and registered in Luxembourg, remains the group’s lead holding company, while Luxembourg financing entities, including ARD Finance, play a key role in the management and restructuring of the debt. The report also mentions the existence of legal proceedings pending before the Luxembourg courts, initiated by minority bondholders, which the group says it is contesting.
In social and industrial terms, Ardagh will employ around 19,000 people in 2025, compared with almost 20,000 in 2024 and around 17,700 in 2021. The number of production sites has risen from 58 in 2021 to 60 in 2024, before falling back to 58 in 2025, reflecting a gradual rationalisation of the industrial perimeter without calling into question the two historical poles, metal and glass.
Taken as a whole, the 2025 results confirm a real operational improvement, but insufficient to offset the weight of the financial structure inherited from previous years. Compared with the annual reports published since 2021, they appear less as a turnaround than as the end of a cycle: that of a group whose business has remained solid, but which has had to mobilise, since Luxembourg, heavy legal and financial instruments to stabilise its balance sheet for the long term.
