Voestalpine : Ramifications of the Covid-19 pandemic have massive impact on voestalpine’s earnings for Q1 2020/21

The key performance indicators (KPIs) of the voestalpine Group for the first quarter of the business year 2020/21 reflect the worldwide recession arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. Hence revenue fell by 28.1% year over year, from EUR 3.3 billion to EUR 2.4 billion. In earnings terms, EBITDA dropped by slightly more than one half year over year, from EUR 371 million to EUR 158 million, but stayed in positive territory nonetheless. At EUR -49 million, profit from operations (EBIT) was negative (previous year: EUR 157 million) but followed a substantially positive trend most recently. The Group's profit before tax is EUR -74 million (Q1 2019/20: EUR 124 million), while the profit after tax is EUR -70 million (Q1 2019/20: EUR 90 million). The gearing ratio (net financial debt as a percentage of equity) climbed from 58.1% (year over year) or 67.2% (as of March 31, 2020) to 71.7% as of June 30, 2020. While net debt rose slightly from EUR 3.9 billion in the previous year to EUR 4 billion in the reporting period, equity fell from EUR 6.7 billion to EUR 5.5 billion. Besides the negative non-recurring effects in the third and fourth quarters of the previous business year (2019/20), this development is due also to the redemption of a hybrid bond as of October 31, 2019. The number of employees (FTE) in the voestalpine Group fell year over year by 7.3% from 51,670 to 47,894 due to lower production capacity utilization. In June 2020, about 10,400 voestalpine employees in Austria, about 2,600 in Germany, and about 2,300 internationally were registered for short time work or similar models, e.g., in Great Britain, Romania, Belgium, France, and the United States.