Amica SA, Michał Rakowski - CFO, #294 PREZENTACJE WYNIKÓW

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At the end of the third quarter, the Amica Group achieved revenues of 2 billion 133 million zlotys. These revenues were comparable to the values we achieved in 2019. We managed to achieve an EBITDA indicator of 180 million, which was a growth of over 21%. Similarly, at the level of operating profit, EBIT profit, we achieved a value of 137 million, a growth of over 26%, and the largest positive impact achieved in 2020. Gross profit at 130 million, a growth versus 2019 of almost 40%.

We are satisfied with these results achieved in the third quarter. I think the most important thing is the gross profit margin on sales — here we have a positive impulse, 27% margin, a margin larger than last year, mainly thanks to the profitability we achieved on goods.

Operating profit, as I said, over 136 million. On this profit, lower selling costs had an impact, particularly logistics, lower general management costs, and here you can see how strongly our efficiency programs worked — mainly marketing, communication, and administrative costs.

During 2020, we also benefited from government aid, and this is also a very important component of the results — nearly 10.5 million zlotys received in various countries, most in Poland, which is 8 million. Ultimately, gross profit of 130 million.

I think this is a good result that we will obviously try to maintain this trend until the end of the year. COVID-19 has affected the group quite strongly. We describe this in our report published on September 30, but briefly, we need to say that at the very beginning of the pandemic, we tried to act from a structural perspective in key areas — that is, sales, production, logistics, finance, and the most important aspect related to our safety policy.

In these areas we acted and basically continue to act today, perhaps more operationally in the scope of sales, logistics, production, and finance. However, the HR team is still very actively functioning, implementing on an ongoing basis all elements related to guidelines associated with the operation of the factory located in Wronki. From our side, we also try to implement additional elements that streamline work and increase the safety of people — these include thermal cameras for measuring temperature and special sanitizing gates. We constantly strive to ensure that health-related information and prevention are widely disseminated. This clearly impacts the morale and motivation of our people.

Regarding the impact on other elements — sales — we see a very strong rebound on the Polish market, also on the German market. We need to point out that the German market was, during the pandemic period, I think, the most stable market. We have somewhat worse results than last year on the French and British markets, comparable results on the Scandinavian, Czech, and Slovak markets. Unfortunately, we also experienced sales declines — such declines were recorded on the Russian market.

In terms of production, I remind you that our factory had a production stoppage at the beginning of April. Currently, the production volume is at maximum utilization of the production capacity of our plant.

We cannot fail to mention mass actions — cost-saving programs that were implemented. We also implemented monitoring of the current capacity situation. These actions led to the fact that today the financial situation of the Amica Group is stable — I would even describe it as very stable — and gives us a large margin of maneuver for the future.

The fourth quarter is always very important for our group from the point of view of market demand and seasonality — this is the moment when sales are the highest. We thought a lot this year about what the fourth quarter would look like. Today we are already past the closed month of October. In November, sales are in line with our expectations — we are satisfied with these levels. We are about to enter December. We will closely observe how the various regulations in individual countries are shaping up and how they affect our sales levels. At this moment, there is no indication that a bad situation will occur. The second wave of the pandemic, the second lockdown, is much weaker than in the second quarter of this year.

Currently, we are working on the budget for 2021, and we are considering the various elements that will have the greatest impact on our operations in 2021.