Regulatory News:

After a solid start of the year 2020, where Europcar Mobility Group (Paris:EUCAR) revenue was up 4% in the first two months, compared to the same period last year, the business got hit by the COVID-19 crisis.

Early March, the drop in the number of bookings accelerated, first in Italy, and then in all our key geographies (Germany, France, Spain, United Kingdom) in Europe, with the US and Australia / New Zealand now slowing down as well.

To adapt to this extraordinary situation and mitigate revenue loss, Europcar Mobility Group has engaged unprecedented cost-saving and cash preservation measures, to navigate through the next months of crisis and be in position to resume normal operations when local economies start to recover.

  • Operationally, group-wide, in a context of lockdowns making the implementation of some of the Group’s cost-cutting measures difficult: 1/ Fleet reduction program and postponement of fleet purchasing. 2/ Contracts renegotiations. 3/ Unpaid leaves and fast staff level adjustments wherever possible. 4/ Full CAPEX freeze. 5/ Stop of all non-essential operational expenses.
  • Cash-wise: 1/ States and European latest support measures, including funding of social measures, tax payment exemption or postponement, … 2/ Ongoing discussions with our key lenders to raise additional liquidity lines, guaranteed for some of them by the French State through the Banque Publique d’Investissement (“BPI”). 3/ The Supervisory Board of Europcar Mobility Group will also propose to the Annual General Meeting on April 28th the cancellation of the dividend payment for the financial year 2019.

Implications for Guidance 2020 and onwards

In light of the current situation and of the various lockdowns decided by some European countries over the last 10 days, the revenue and Corporate EBITDA drop are significant. The Group considers that its 2020 objectives are no longer relevant and that it is also premature to estimate the full impacts of this crisis on the Group’s short and medium-term objectives (SHIFT 2023). These impacts will depend on the length of the outbreak and on the pace of recovery of local economies after this episode.

We are monitoring the situation in real time and doing our utmost to adapt to this unprecedented crisis. Europcar Mobility Group will make a progress report at the occasion of the Q1 2020 results publication on April 27th.

Our Group, as a mobility service company, has a 70-year tradition of service to the public and to local and international companies. Throughout this period, we will do everything in our power to continue this mission, making our people and customers safety our #1 priority (see https://www.europcar.com/customer-information), because we see ourselves as providers of an important service, in an exceptional context: when possible, contributing to the safe mobility of people / workers, and of key goods such as food or medicine.

We take this occasion to warmly thank all our staff, throughout countries and businesses. They are demonstrating an extraordinary level of engagement and dedication in these troubled times.