11 Jun 2020

Babcock publishes full year results for the year ending 31 March 2020

Resilient business model ready for the year ahead         

The Group today published its results for the year ended 31 March 2020. Chief Executive Archie Bethel said:

“We end a busy year in a strong position to deal with the current Coronavirus (COVID-19) uncertainty. We saw strong performances across our Marine, Nuclear and Land sectors and have taken action to address weaknesses in Aviation, including writing down goodwill to reflect our updated expectations of the oil and gas market. The early impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic had a limited impact on the Group in the last financial year but is creating uncertainty as we head into this new financial year.

“I am immensely proud of the way our people have responded in these challenging times. At Babcock we pride ourselves on the fact that we support customers responsible for providing critical services: our work in defence and aerial emergency services saves lives, supports national defence and protects communities. As always, my priority, and the priority of the Group, is to keep our people safe whilst making sure that those vital services can continue.

“I am also extremely grateful to HM Government and in particular the Cabinet Office and Ministry of Defence who acted quickly and decisively to ensure that contracts continue to be funded and that cash flowed effectively through the main suppliers and down into the supply chain. Also, working with us and other major suppliers, we have together quickly developed safe working solutions at site level supported by our employees, trades unions and regulators. These solutions are being widely shared to ensure that the entire sector is benefiting from the experiences of individual companies.

“The majority of our work has been declared to be critical and our people designated as key workers. All of our major sites have remained open, and we have worked closely with our customers to understand and support their changing requirements and operational priorities. Whether working on site or at home, we have continued to work on major defence programmes, to design new systems, to provide emergency services and to keep nuclear power sites operational. Across Europe our emergency medical services teams have worked courageously alongside national health services in the transport by air of critically ill patients to hospital.

“We have also contributed to the fight against the pandemic with new innovative technical solutions. We pioneered the introduction of biocontainment isolation stretcher units which allow virus positive patients to be transported safely, and new in-helicopter barrier systems that provide added protection to flight crews and medical staff. We have shared the experiences gained in Italy, Spain and France with our teams elsewhere, including Sweden where we refitted one of our aircraft to create a dedicated COVID-19 air ambulance.

“By establishing strong safety protocols, many of our contracts have continued to operate throughout the crisis. The business impact of the virus will be felt most significantly in our short-cycle work and adjacent market businesses. We have put mitigation measures into place, including reducing and deferring non-essential operating and capital expenditure to protect the business in the short term. We continue to model a number of scenarios around the ongoing impact of the virus. We have also developed detailed plans to return to productive operating capacity in response to government guidance and customer need as the countries in which we operate begin to emerge from varied restrictions.

“Looking back over last year, we made solid progress in driving our strategy forward. We achieved good revenue growth across our defence businesses and won significant opportunities, including building the next generation of UK warships, securing long term positions on major submarine projects for the USA and Australia, and expanding our aviation defence operations in France. Our expanding technology capabilities were crucial in these wins, and I am really pleased with the high level of growth seen across our technology businesses this year.

“Our area of weakness was in the Oil and Gas aviation business. The global oil and gas market has become even more competitive and we have written down the value of assets in that business to reflect this and impaired Aviation goodwill to reflect how the market has changed and that we do not expect any recovery any time soon. We have also addressed the cost base of our civil aviation and civil nuclear businesses to right size them for the future given the weaker oil and gas market, price and cost pressures in our emergency services business and the smaller civil nuclear business following the end of the Magnox contract and a slowing UK civil nuclear market, exacerbated by COVID-19.

“We enter the new financial year facing uncertain times but the long term characteristics of our business remain strong. We provide some commentary on the year ahead across our sectors but are unable to provide detailed financial guidance at this time. Given this uncertainty, the Board has deferred the decision on our final dividend until there is greater certainty on the impact COVID-19 will have on our business and stakeholders.

“Despite this uncertainty, the Group’s strong liquidity position, robust business model, record order book and pipeline and focus on critical services gives us confidence that we will deliver for all our stakeholders in the current year.”

For full details of today’s announcement, go to https://www.babcockinternational.com/investors/results-and-presentations/