Bodycote 2020 Financial Results
The world’s largest commercial heat treater, UK based Bodycote released their full year results for the year ended 31 December 2020 this past Friday and they can be found in their entirely at
https://www.bodycote.com/wp-co
“Commenting, Stephen Harris, Group Chief Executive, said: “Bodycote weathered the adversity of 2020 generating a headline EBITDA margin of 26.4%, a headline operating margin of 12.6%, and producing a strong free cash flow conversion of 141% (£106m). 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.
The Board is proposing a final dividend of 13.4p, which brings the total ordinary dividend for 2020 to 19.4p. This continues Bodycote’s uninterrupted 30+ year track record of growing or maintaining the dividend and reflects the Board’s confidence in the Group’s future earnings and cash flow potential.
Looking ahead, markets are recovering, though the uncertain timeline for recovery in the civil aerospace market clouds the short-term outlook for this part of the business. Nonetheless, our restructuring programme is now largely complete, resulting in a higher quality business aligned to the growth opportunities we are seeing. The Board is confident that Bodycote is well placed to drive growth and take advantage of the upturn in activity across all of its markets as they strengthen.”
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