Monde Nissin’s own filing describes Marlow Foods, trading as Quorn Foods, as “the only large-scale commercial provider of mycoprotein”, with “over 30 years of operating experience”. Every Quorn-branded product contains mycoprotein, and all of it is made at one site, Belasis in Billingham.
In the first half of 2026 that business produced net sales of ₱7,381 million and core net income after tax of ₱106 million. The 17-Q prints the margin next to it: 1.4%.
This was the good half. It is the segment’s first positive core net income in years, against a ₱215 million core net loss in H1 2025. Core EBITDA rose 248.8% to ₱574 million. Gross margin expanded 688 basis points to 31.0%. Management called it the third consecutive quarter of positive constant-currency top-line growth.
That is the point of writing about it. This is not a distressed alt-protein company. This is what biomass fermentation protein looks like when it works — forty years of process knowledge, a category-leading brand, no regulatory obstacle, no scale-up risk, a fully depreciated learning curve — and in a recovery half it converted 1.4% of sales into core net income.
Methodology note
All figures here are in Philippine pesos, because that is what Monde Nissin publishes. The company’s H1 2026 press release, earnings presentation, transcript and 17-Q contain no USD figures at all. Dollar conversions circulating in trade coverage are the publications’ own. We have used the company’s segment table and the 17-Q’s management discussion throughout, and flagged our own arithmetic wherever we have done any.
One naming change matters for anyone pulling the series: the FY2025 filings call this segment “Meat Alternative”; from H1 2026 the press release, presentation and 17-Q call it “Protein Business (formerly Meat Alternative)”, while the PFRS segment note inside the same 17-Q still says “Meat Alternative”. A company renaming its alt-meat division “Protein” mid-recovery is itself worth noting.
The half, as filed
All figures ₱ millions, from the company’s H1 2026 segment table.
| Protein segment | H1 2025 | H1 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net sales | 6,592 | 7,381 | +12.0% reported, +2.2% constant currency |
| Gross profit | 1,587 | 2,285 | +44.0% |
| Gross margin | 24.1% | 31.0% | +688 bps |
| Core operating expenses | 1,751 | 2,090 | +19.4% |
| Cost of goods sold | 5,005 | 5,096 | +1.8% |
| Core EBITDA | 165 | 574 | +248.8% |
| Core EBITDA margin | 2.5% | 7.8% | +530 bps |
| Core net income after tax | (215) | 106 | — |
| Core net income margin | (3.3)% | 1.4% | — |
The reported 12.0% growth is mostly currency. The constant-currency figure is 2.2%, and volumes were up 1.7% in Q2. On the audited PFRS basis the Meat Alternative segment recorded income before income tax of ₱94.0 million and net income of ₱91.8 million for the half, on total assets of ₱14,893.8 million.
Two things drove the margin, per the 17-Q: “supply chain cost savings, productivity initiatives and better finished goods inventory management”, plus “targeted selling price increases”. Cost of goods rose 1.8% while sales rose 12.0% reported — that is the whole story of the gross margin expansion.
Practical consequence: the recovery is a cost and pricing story, not a volume story. A 1.7% volume increase does not repair a fermentation business’s fixed-cost absorption. Anyone citing Quorn’s turnaround as evidence of returning consumer demand for meat alternatives is citing the wrong line.
The long arc, in the company’s own words
The 2025 annual report contains the most useful passage we have read on this beat, because it is the company narrating its own decade:
“Post acquisition, from 2015 to 2019, MNUKL achieved Net Sales CAGR growth of around 9.8% (in GBP), a significant improvement from previous owners. Moreover, the Meat Alternative segment consistently recorded a solid EBITDA between ₱1,899 million to ₱2,283 million from 2017 to 2020. However, unprecented [sic] macro headwinds and category headwinds, have put pressure on the top line and bottom line of the Meat Alternative segment. MNUKL’s 2019 to 2023 Net Sales CAGR growth declined by negative 2% while Core EBITDA deteriorated to ₱1,471 million in FY 2021, ₱618 million in FY 2022, and neutral in FY2023 despite benefits from restructuring.”
Adding the years since, from the audited EBITDA reconciliation and the FY25 and H1 26 releases, the full series for the segment reads:
| Period | Segment EBITDA / Core EBITDA (₱m) |
|---|---|
| 2017–2020 (range) | 1,899 to 2,283 |
| FY2021 | 1,471 |
| FY2022 | 618 |
| FY2023 | approximately nil (audited EBITDA: −4) |
| FY2024 | 12 |
| FY2025 | 495 |
| H1 2026 | 574 |
The peak is 2017–2020. The trough is 2023–2024. The recovery is real and steep in percentage terms — H1 2026 alone exceeds all of FY2025 — and it is still running at roughly a quarter of the 2017–2020 annual rate on a half-year basis.
Group CFO Jesse Teo put the same point positively on the call: “Our first half EBITDA exceeded our full year EBITDA last year by 15% in peso terms and by 9% in GBP terms.”
What has been written off
This is the number that should anchor any comparison between Quorn and a fermentation start-up’s model.
| Year | Meat Alternative impairment (₱m) | Composition |
|---|---|---|
| FY2022 | 21,164 | Goodwill 16,501 + brand 4,043 (£60.0m) + PPE 620 |
| FY2023 | 13,361 | PPE 7,188 + brand 6,173 |
| FY2024 | 6,825 | PPE 2,953 + brand 3,872; goodwill fully impaired at 31 Dec 2024 and 2023 |
| FY2025 | (619) | Partial reversal, “driven by improved future cash flow projections” |
| Net, our sum | ≈40,731 |
The FY2022 line is our addition of the three disclosed components; the FY2023–FY2025 figures are the segment-attributed impairment line from the audited EBITDA reconciliation. The ≈₱40.7 billion total is our arithmetic, not a figure Monde Nissin publishes.
Two details inside that table matter more than the total.
The 2022 PPE impairment was on fermenters. The annual report states the ₱620 million PPE impairment “was largely on Quorn fermenter assets due to production cost rationalization in UK”. That is a mature operator writing down installed fermentation capacity because it could not run it economically — a data point that belongs alongside every capacity announcement in this sector.
Goodwill is gone entirely. “Goodwill has been fully impaired as at December 31, 2024 and 2023.” The acquisition premium has been fully written off.
For scale outside the peso series, the company’s press release footnote records that “As of December 31, 2025, the net cumulative impairment of MNSPL amounted to GBP 259 mn” — but note that this figure is measured only from 1 January 2023 onward, under the terms of a top-up deed, and therefore excludes the 2022 goodwill write-off entirely. It is not the total.
What the auditors will underwrite
The IAS 36 assumptions in the 2025 annual report are, for our purposes, the most interesting disclosure in the document. They are what an audited, mature, market-leading biomass fermentation business is permitted to assume about its own future:
| Assumption | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales revenue growth, five-year average | 4.30% (2026–2030) | 3.20% (2025–2029) | 4.30% (2024–2028) |
| Long-term growth rate | 2.00% | 2.00% | 2.00% |
| Pre-tax discount rate (WACC-derived) | 9.98% | 9.35% | 10.10% |
Four-point-three percent revenue growth and a 2% terminal rate. That is the growth profile a Big Four audit will support for the category leader in mycoprotein, in the market where it holds 27.8% value share.
Practical consequence: when a fermentation-protein company presents a model with double-digit sustained growth and a mid-teens terminal margin, the useful question is not whether the technology works. It is why this business — same technology class, four decades of operating experience, no regulatory risk, number one brand position — is underwritten at 4.3% and 2.0%. Quorn is the survivorship-bias-free comparator, and it is a public one.
Capital spending is consistent with that. Protein capex was ₱240.6 million in H1 2026, down from ₱325.1 million in H1 2025, and CFO Jesse Teo told the call: “The protein business will be spending less than Php 1 billion in CapEx for the year.” Against a group 2026 plan of ₱6,489 million, the Protein bar is ₱988 million.
The business underneath
The concentration is extreme and worth stating plainly. From the audited geographic revenue note (₱ thousands):
| Market | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2025 share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 11,153,610 | 10,685,625 | 10,806,415 | 79.1% |
| United States | 858,872 | 757,567 | 749,750 | 5.5% |
| Other countries | 2,215,031 | 2,148,380 | 2,103,114 | 15.4% |
| Total | 14,227,513 | 13,591,572 | 13,659,279 |
The world’s only large-scale mycoprotein business is, commercially, a UK business. US sales have declined in each of the last two years. The segment was 15.8% of Monde Nissin group net sales in 2025 and 16.7% in H1 2026.
Within the UK, Circana 52-week data cited in the annual report puts Quorn first at 27.8% of grocery retail value share in 2025 and Cauldron sixth at 3.5% — Cauldron having fallen from fourth place and 4.4% in 2024, while Quorn rose from 27.2%.
Foodservice, 18% of the protein business, fell 5% in Q2. Quorn Foods CEO David Flochel: “Minus 5% in Q2, which is disappointing… What we are seeing are more structural challenges than expected… it’s probably going to get a bit worse before it gets better, before returning to growth.”
Headcount has fallen from 783 at the end of 2024 to 732 at the end of 2025, of whom 712 are in the UK. The company operates three UK production plants — Belasis, Stokesley and Methwold — though only Belasis makes mycoprotein, using glucose as the key input, sourced from suppliers in the UK and France.
The counter-argument
The bear reading above understates a genuine operational turnaround, and three points deserve weight.
First, the direction is unambiguous and fast. Gross margin up 688 basis points in a half, EBITDA up 248.8%, and the first positive core net income in years is not a rounding artefact. CFO Nick Cooper told the call that the trajectory keeps the business “on track to meet the projection that we set out in the IS 36 at the end of last year and therefore avoid further impairment”, and FY2025 already produced a ₱619 million impairment reversal on improved cash flow projections. Write-downs that reverse were, by definition, too pessimistic.
Second, the half was achieved into a shrinking category. Nielsen-NIQ data in the earnings presentation shows the total UK meat alternatives market down 2.3% in Q2 2026 while Quorn brand sales grew 0.7% and private label fell 11.3%. Taking share in a declining market is harder than growing in a rising one.
Third, the margin is depressed by deliberate spending. Core operating expenses rose 19.4%, “mainly due higher marketing spend to support volume growth in UK”. A business choosing to spend into a recovery will show a worse net margin than one harvesting.
There is also a cost headwind that is not structural. Both the press release and the 17-Q attribute higher packaging costs to the “Middle East crisis” and note the impact “remains reflected in the inventories”; Cooper expects it to be “a stronger drag on the gross margin in Q3 and Q4”, substantially offset by further transformation savings. (The word “Iran” appears in the presentation and in Cooper’s spoken remarks, not in the filed statements.)
None of that changes the benchmark, which is the reason for the piece. Even granting the full bull case, the number a fermentation-protein model has to beat is a mature category leader earning 1.4% core net margin in a recovering half, underwritten at 4.3% growth.
What we could not establish
- Any mycoprotein capacity figure in tonnes from Monde Nissin. Neither the 2024 nor 2025 annual report discloses one; the UK sites do not appear in the property tables. Third-party figures exist but are forward-looking, inconsistent with each other on fermenter commissioning dates, and we have not relied on them. This is a striking gap for the world’s only large-scale producer, and it is the same problem we found across published mycoprotein functionality data.
- The 2015 acquisition price from a Monde Nissin document. Neither annual report states it. Third-party records put the deal at £550 million enterprise value, agreed 30 September 2015 and completed 30 October 2015; a widely repeated “$831 million” is a contemporaneous trade-press conversion of that sterling figure, not a company-stated number. We have therefore not used a dollar acquisition price anywhere above.
- A like-for-like UK market share series. The Circana 52-week annual shares and the Nielsen-NIQ 12-week quarterly shares are different providers on different bases, and the Nielsen-NIQ series has been restated. They should not be compared to each other.
- Revenue per tonne, or any unit economics below the segment line. Not disclosed.
- The GBP 259 million cumulative impairment figure inside the 17-A itself. It appears in the press release footnote, which refers readers to the 17-A for detail; we could not locate the number in the 17-A text.
- Whether Marlow Ingredients, the B2B division established in 2023, is material. No separate revenue is disclosed.
What to watch
- Whether the second half holds. Cooper has told the market the Middle East input costs land in Q3 and Q4 and that transformation savings should substantially offset them. This is a specific, checkable forecast.
- Whether foodservice stabilises. Flochel says it gets worse first. Foodservice is 18% of the segment and the only channel still falling.
- Whether the impairment reversals continue. A second reversal would say the 2022–2024 write-downs overshot; a fresh impairment would say the recovery has stalled. Cooper has staked a position on avoiding one.
- Whether Monde Nissin ever publishes a capacity figure. For a business whose competitive moat is described in its own filing as fermentation know-how and installed scale, the absence of a tonnage number is the most conspicuous silence in the file.