CEVA Group plc, announces results and continues to outperform the market
Cash generation through operations at €226 million during the first nine months of 2009 CEVA Logistics, a leading global supply chain management company, has today announced its Quarter Three and nine months, 2009 financial results. The first nine months of 2009, have been an abnormal period for CEVA and others in the industry. Linked to the external economic situation our results have continued to be impacted by reduced volumes and a deflated airfreight market. The improvements we started to see in Quarter Two have continued. Although volumes in the airfreight industry have improved, the industry has been subjected to significant rate increases, which has offset these increases in volumes. We have also seen increases in ocean freight volumes and across our automotive, consumer and retail segments. To the three months ended 30 September 2009, EBITDA before specific items was €68 million, only one million lower than the previous Quarter in spite of the usual summer holiday shutdown in Europe. Versus the comparative period in 2008, EBITDA is down by 33.3%. We have continued to focus efforts on improving Net Working Capital (NWC). Since the inception of this program in December 2008, we have reduced our NWC by 76.2%. At the end of the first nine months, NWC stands at €30 million, and during the same time period cash generated from operations has increased to €226 million. The cost savings program announced at the beginning of the year is well on track to generate the expected savings of over €100 million by the Year End. These initiatives have helped drive an improvement in liquidity1, which has increased to €225 million, at the end of the first nine months. During the first nine months of 2009, our new business awards have continued at an enhanced rate and are up 21% compared to the first nine months of 2008. Our ongoing program of cross selling wins has amassed revenue of €264 million YTD with Q3 2009 contributing €71 million. Pleasingly, in 2008 we set an integration target of €500m of cross selling revenues by the end of 2010 and we have reached and surpassed this target already, with total cross selling wins now standing at €515 million. During the Quarter we successfully concluded a debt exchange which has reduced our debt by €139 million and reduced annualized interest payments by €7 million on a pro forma basis. Subsequently, with the improvements in the capital markets we successfully completed a private placement offering of US$210 million of 11-5/8% senior secured notes due 2016. CEVA received net proceeds of approximately US$196 million from the offering and intends to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes. We will announce our results for Quarter Four and the Full Year 2009 week commencing 08 March,2010. Quelle: CEVA Logistics GmbH |