SPANISH manufacturers Talgo and CAF have published their results for the 2020 financial year, with both companies announcing a fall in Ebitda and profit but predicting a return to profitability in 2021.
Talgo
Talgo reported an adjusted Ebitda of €34.2m for 2020, falling 54.5% compared with €75.2m for the previous year, due primarily to the extraordinary economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, the company’s Ebitda margin recovered in the second half of 2020, rising from 0% in the second quarter to 7% in the fourth quarter, due to an increase in industrial activity and the partial recovery of maintenance activity, as well as the successful implementation of contingency plans and cost-saving measures.
Talgo also announced a net turnover of €487.1m for 2020, 21.3% higher than the €401.7m turnover recorded in 2019. This includes a year-on-year rise in fourth quarter revenue for the year of 20.3%.
The company also reports that it has an order backlog of €3.18bn ensuring production for the 2020-2024 period, and says it is in an optimal financial position to execute the projects. In particular, Talgo expects to start delivery of a fleet of 30 Avril high-speed trains to Spanish national operator Renfe this year, under a €1.491bn contract awarded in 2016.
The company says that it currently forecasts an order book execution of up to 35%-37% in the 2021-2022 period and expects to achieve an average book-to-bill ratio of more than 1.2 for the 2020-2021 period. The company forecasts an adjusted Ebitda of around 10%-12% for 2021, due to an expected gradual recovery in profitability following the easing of Covid restrictions.
CAF
CAF has reported an adjusted Ebitda for 2020 of €201m, falling 18% compared with €244m in 2019, with an Ebitda margin of 7.3% for the year, compared with 9.4% in 2019.
This is despite a 6% rise in revenue for 2020 to €2.8bn, compared with €2.6bn in 2019.
The company says that the primary cause of the fall in Ebitda is a reduction in activity in the first half of the year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
CAF also says that it has an order backlog of €8.8bn, with delays to contract awarding processes due to the pandemic, particularly for large rail projects, reducing the company’s order intake from €4bn in 2019 to €2.1bn in 2020, while its average book-to-bill ratio dropped from 1.6 in 2019 to 0.8 in 2020.
CAF says that it expects a surge in revenues and profits in 2021 due to the combined effect of both new opportunities and a backlog of projects from 2020 which were delayed by the Covid pandemic, further accentuated by the execution of various national recovery plans.
