Bekaert delivers a record performance over the first nine months of 2021
Highlights, trends and actions
• Consolidated sales of € 3 559 million (+30.3%) and combined sales of € 4 327 million (+36.2%) over the first nine months of 2021, driven by a volume rebound to pre-covid levels and a strong pricing strategy execution
• All-time high quarter revenue: consolidated sales of € 1 253 million (+26.1%) and combined sales of € 1 545 million (+30.8%)
• Net debt of € 538 million, compared with € 834 million on 30 September 2020 and € 604 million at year-end 2020, resulting in very solid balance sheet
Market developments in the three-month period July-September 2021:
• Demand continued to benefit from the post-covid rebound and remained strong across many geographies, with the exception of China
• The global supply chain remains constrained on the back of several headwinds associated with raw material shortages and freight bottlenecks
• Cost inflation has impacted various input costs including raw materials, transportation, and energy
While the global macro environment remains unstable, Bekaert has successfully accelerated its transformation allowing the company to leverage on several opportunities. Third quarter actions have been specifically geared towards :
• Driving further agility of the supply chain management, which has allowed to:
- Secure supply continuity to customers
- Proactively capture the opportunities arising from reverse globalization trends
- Keep the working capital under control
• Further improving the product and business mix, in line with our strategy to more efficiently segment and upgrade the business portfolio
• Strong pricing discipline and execution resulting in the mitigation of the raw material price increases and other cost inflation
Outlook
While we anticipate softening conditions in some of the demand tailwinds, remain cautious about supply chain disruption risks, and take into account the usual seasonality effects of the fourth quarter, we project solid sales in most of our business areas for the remainder of the year and reconfirm our outlook:
Barring unexpected events, Bekaert projects for FY 2021 an underlying EBIT margin on sales of 10% or better and sales of approximately € 4.6 billion.
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