Good resilience in the 2020 first half results and continued delivery on key strategic initiatives across all solutions

Monday, Sep 28th 2020

H1 2020 highlights

  • Strong free cash flow1 generation of €76 million in H1 2020 (vs. €21 million in H1 2019) reinforcing our robust liquidity position of €933 million, and low leverage of 0.8x excluding leasing2 as at 31 July 2020;
  • Solid business fundamentals with continued resilience of recurring revenue even in the context of the COVID-19 health crisis (-5.9% organically vs. H1 2019, of which -4.5% for Major Operations);
  • Sales of €485 million in H1 2020, a contained organic decline of 12.8%3 vs. H1 2019, of which -10.5% for Major Operations;
  • Gradual sales recovery starting from May, driven by Business Process Automation and Parcel Locker Solutions activities;
  • Current EBIT4 at €61 million in H1 2020 (vs. €93 million in H1 2019), with profitability enforced by active cost management – EBITDA margin of 21.5% and gross margin stable at 73.4% in H1 2020 (vs. 24.6% and 73.8% respectively in H1 2019);
  • Net attributable income at €21 million in H1 2020 (vs. €47 million in H1 2019)

Business development and commercial successes

  • Several new multi-year contracts signed in the Retail/Carrier sectors worth more than €60 million , including notably:
    • First major contract in the US retail sector with Lowes for the nationwide deployment of 1,700+ parcel lockers;
    • New contract in Japan with Yamato for the roll-out of 3,000 parcel lockers Lite;
  • Acquisition of leading FinTech company YayPay™, specialized in SaaS Accounts Receivable automation solutions;
  • Launch of new innovative products: Quadient® Impress™, Parcel Locker Lite™, iX-series.

2020 outlook

Thanks to its business portfolio, Quadient is uniquely positioned to continue to benefit from the acceleration of the shift towards digital solutions and e-commerce booming.

After the resilient performance recorded in the first half of 2020, revenue trend is expected to improve in the second half of 2020, driven by the growth in Business Process Automation and Parcel Locker Solutions activities.

Excluding unfavorable development with regards to the COVID-19 health crisis and worsening economic environment in the coming months, Quadient expects for full-year 20205 :

  • Organic sales decline of around 10% compared to full-year 2019;
  • Current EBIT4 in the range of €135 million to €145 million6;
  • Free cash flow1 above €100 million6.

 

Quadient (Euronext Paris: QDT), a leader in business solutions for meaningful customer connections through digital and physical channels, today announces its 2020 second-quarter consolidated sales and first-half results.

Geoffrey Godet, Chief Executive Officer of Quadient, stated: “Thanks to the strength of our highly recurring business model, the tight cost management measures we have implemented and the agility we have demonstrated throughout the difficult economic environment that we have faced, Quadient has succeeded to maintain a high level of profitability with EBITDA margin in excess of 21% and preserve a very robust liquidity position during the first half of the year. Overall, our three growth engines remained broadly stable, proving the relevance of Quadient’s transformation into an integrated provider of software solutions and smart hardware. Our recurring business model with both software subscription revenues on the one hand, and leasing and rental revenues on the other hand, helped to mitigate some of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis had on mail equipment, supplies, services and license sales which have been severely restricted by the lockdown situation.”

“The current context makes Quadient’s solutions more relevant than ever and we are uniquely positioned to benefit in the future from the accelerated adoption by our customers of multichannel and personalized digital communications solutions and more effective last-mile delivery management solutions due to ecommerce booming”, he added.

“In the meantime, we have relentlessly pursued the execution of our strategy, as evidenced by the multiple initiatives carried across our four solutions. We have launched several new innovative products such as a fully-integrated cloud platform for customer document management, a new series of franking machines and compact parcel lockers . In Parcel Locker Solutions, we have entered into new markets including the UK Residential sector and the US Retail sector on the back of an agreement with a top 10 US retail chain, and we also signed a new parcel locker contract with Yamato in Japan. Moreover, we secured promising distribution agreements in the field of Customer Experience Management. Lastly, we kept on reshaping our business portfolio with the divestment of ProShip and the acquisition of YayPay, a leading US FinTech specialized in Account Receivable automation. All these developments will help our customers and positively contribute to the future of Quadient”, he concluded.

 

The full press release in available in our Investor Relations website, click here