Bodycote focusing on repositioning
Bodycote (LON:BOY) confirmed its revenue fell by 16.9% on Friday to £598m, as well as its organic revenues dropping by 20% during 2020.
The Macclesfield-based company’s operating profit decreased by by 44% to £75.2m, while its EBITDA margin fell more narrowly, to 26.4%, from 29.2% the year before.
The FTSE 250 company announced £36m of cash restructuring within its results, and said it would lead to £30m of yearly savings by 2022.
Bodycote said its free cash flow conversion, at 141% for 2020, was “excellent”, up from 91% the year before. Its closing debt was reported at £23m as the company paid £96m of the consideration for Ellison.
The company proposed a final dividend of 13.4p for 2020, putting the total payout for the year at 19.4p, up slightly from 19.3p per share the year prior.
Stephen Harris, chief executive at Bodycote, spoke about the impact of the pandemic on the business among other things:
“This year has been hugely challenging for our people. Not only have they been confronted with the impact on their personal lives from the COVID-19 pandemic and all its consequences, but they have also had to deal with significant changes in the working environment and organisation. I am immensely proud of the fortitude and resilience shown by our employees as they continued to deliver first-class service to our customers under the most trying of conditions.”
“As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the need to safeguard the wellbeing of our employees drove an immediate, large scale mobilisation of resources across the Group. I am very pleased to see how effective the measures we have taken have been and I want to acknowledge the remarkable performance of the global and many local management teams involved in this unprecedented effort.”
“As part of our strategy, we have focused in recent years on repositioning the Group to take advantage of a number of megatrends in our end markets. Our expansion in Eastern Europe is targeted at supporting the Electric Vehicle supply chains that are establishing themselves in this Region. The change in focus of our civil aerospace business addresses the structural shift within the industry towards point-to-point air travel and narrow body aircraft. Additionally, the repurposing of some of our North American facilities aligns our business with the diminishing importance of fossil fuels. The restructuring programme we have been executing in 2020 represents an acceleration of our strategy and is exactly aligned with these secular trends.”
 confirmed its revenue fell by 16.9% on Friday to £598m, as well as its organic revenues dropping by 20% during 2020.){kind=link}