Annual & Sustainability report 2019

Key financial highlights include

Continuing operations

• Net sales of SEK 11,641 m, an decrease of 6 percent compared to the same period last year.  
• The year ended with an EBITDA totaling SEK 1,554 m compared to 1,814 m for the full year 2018 with an EBITDA margin of 13.4% (14.6%).
• The Group’s available funds, liquid funds and unutilized credit facilities, were SEK 1,248 m (1,120) at the end of December 2019. Net debt, pension liability amounting to SEK 8,526 m (13,103). Leverage was 5.5x (5.6x)at the end of 2019

Developments and strategic direction:

A number of events 2019 have formed the basis for the future of Perstorp:

• We have re-positioned our product portfolio after having closed the divestment of the Capa™ business. The proceeds from the divestment allowed us to significantly strengthen our balance sheet and leverage our position, which has enabled us to focus on driving future growth from our three platforms – Polyols, Oxo and Animal Nutrition.
• At the start of 2019, we introduced a new transformational program, Level Up. After the last years’ development of functional excellence, a new operational model and a new organization were launched with the main objective to better address customer demands for supply reliability and cross-functional collaboration. Together we have created a more lean and efficient company, with the aim of being even better at serving our customers’ needs.
• Shortly after the transformational program was launched, Perstorp entered a new refinancing agreement for our credit facilities, enabling a lowering of our financial costs.
• Furthermore, we later in the year broke ground for our new greenfield Penta plant in India.

President's comments

Jan Secher, President and CEO of Perstorp, commented: “Macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty made 2019 a challenging year in many ways. A continued and accelerated slowdown in the world economy led to considerably weakened demand for several of our products.

Profitable Growth continues to be our headline moving forward. We have set ambitious and challenging goals for ourselves including outperforming the market over the coming strategic cycle. On this basis we maintain our very strict cost control, drive a strong focus on sales and pricing as well as on the availability of products. Combined with a continued focus on improvement programs in many areas of the company, we will be well positioned when the market improves.

I am very proud to lead this company, and to take Perstorp to the next level in terms of performance. We already have the capabilities, the engagement and the tools. It is now up to us.”

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