The company behind Fruitisimo is owed more than it sells in a year

Sales shrank, the unpaid invoices stayed

In Prague, Fruitisimo is a name from the juice counters where fruit goes into a press and comes out as a smoothie while you wait. FRUITISIMO GROUP s.r.o. is the company that carries that name. An s.r.o. is the Czech limited liability company, and the figures here cover this company on its own, under Czech accounting rules, in CZK, for calendar years. Its 2025 accounts tell a story about invoices rather than fruit.

Revenue in 2025 came to CZK 9.3m, down 83.5% from CZK 56.0m in 2024. That alone would be the headline in most years. The turn is on the other side of the balance sheet. At the end of December 2025, customers still owed the company CZK 10.7m. That is more than it invoiced in the whole year.

Controllers measure this with receivable days: the money customers owe, expressed as the number of days of sales it represents. For FRUITISIMO GROUP it stood at 420 days at the end of 2025, up 261 days from 159 days a year earlier. Even the 2024 figure was long for any business. The 2025 figure means that, on average, a koruna of sales is collected well over a year after it is booked, if it is collected at all.

The income statement looks better than that. Operating profit rose 136.4% to CZK 2.1m, and the operating margin, the share of revenue left after running the business, widened to 22.8% from 1.6%. A smaller company that earns more per koruna sounds like a successful slimming cure. The cash line does not agree. The company ended 2025 with CZK 87.0k in the bank, down from CZK 4.0m a year earlier.

Why the invoices outlived the sales

The usual reasons for receivable days to climb are simple. A company gives customers longer terms to win or keep them. A few large customers stretch their payments because they can. Invoices go out late, or are disputed and sit unpaid while both sides argue.

A business whose sales are falling fast has one more reason, and it is mechanical. The invoices from last year's bigger business do not disappear when the business shrinks. Receivables at FRUITISIMO GROUP did fall, from CZK 24.3m to CZK 10.7m, but nowhere near as fast as sales. Divide what is left by a much smaller year of revenue and the days balloon. Part of the 420 days is arithmetic. Part of it is money that has simply not arrived.

The longer view supports the arithmetic. Revenue was CZK 50.4m in 2023, so over two years the company's sales shrank by 57.2% a year on average. This is not one bad year. It is a company that used to run a much larger operation and now carries the leftovers of it on its balance sheet. Total assets of CZK 96.9m sit against a year of sales of CZK 9.3m.

The accounts do not say who the debtors are, whether they are outside customers or companies close to the group, or how old the invoices are. That is the one figure that would settle it: an ageing list of receivables by customer. A pile of recent invoices from a few reliable buyers is a timing issue. A pile of old invoices from a business that no longer trades with the company is a write-off waiting for its turn.

The same stretch shows on the other side. Trade payables, the bills the company owes its own suppliers, came to CZK 7.6m, or 301 days of revenue, against 66 days a year earlier. FRUITISIMO GROUP waits for its customers, and its suppliers wait for FRUITISIMO GROUP. That keeps the books in balance for a while. It also means the company is lending to its customers with money it effectively borrowed from its suppliers.

What slow money costs a thin business

The problem with uncollected revenue is that interest is paid in cash, not in invoices. The company carried financial debt of CZK 35.5m at the end of 2025, about 7.88× its EBITDA (operating profit before depreciation, here CZK 4.5m). Interest cost CZK 1.8m in the year, and operating profit covered it only 1.15×. After interest and everything else, net profit was CZK 85.0k, a net margin of 0.9%. The median net margin of 3 Czech food and drink companies used for comparison was 6.9%.

So the healthier operating margin barely reaches the bottom line, and almost none of it reaches the bank account. Equity also fell 20.7% to CZK 47.2m, so the owners' cushion is thinner than a year ago, though it still covers 48.7% of total assets.

For anyone who buys a smoothie at a Fruitisimo counter, none of this changes the taste of the juice. For the wider market it is a familiar pattern in Czech hospitality and food brands that grew through shopping centre counters: when the network shrinks, the receivables, the loans and the supplier bills often shrink more slowly than the sales that justified them.

The check for anyone running a business is the one this company's numbers beg for. Print an aged receivables list, name every customer who pays later than the terms on your invoice, and compare your average days to collect with those terms. If the average is longer than your terms, the difference is a loan you are giving without charging interest.

FRUITISIMO GROUP closed 2025 with a better margin and a bank balance that would not cover a busy week of fresh fruit. I would watch one line before any other: whether those CZK 10.7m of receivables turn into cash in 2026, or into a write-off. Revenue counts when it is invoiced. It only matters when it is paid.