Highlights
- Robust financial performance with excellent cash generation
- Underlying EBITDA of €1,353 million, with margin of 20.3%
- Cash generated from operations of €1,485 million
- Strong balance sheet at 1.3x net debt to underlying EBITDA
- Recommended full year dividend of 60.0 euro cents per share, up 5%
- Decisive and effective COVID-19 response
- Investing through-the-cycle with capital investment projects delivering growth, enhanced cost competitiveness and sustainability benefits
- Delivered against our 2020 Growing Responsibly sustainability commitments and set new ones, the Mondi Action Plan 2030 (MAP2030)
- Leveraging long-term trends of sustainability, e-commerce and enhancing our customers' brand value
- Well-positioned with cost-advantaged asset base, strong balance sheet and unique portfolio of sustainable solutions
Andrew King, Mondi Group Chief Executive Officer, said:
"Mondi delivered a robust performance in 2020, with underlying EBITDA of €1,353 million, ROCE of 15.2% and continued excellent cash generation. This is testament to the strength of our business model in the face of significantly lower average selling prices across our key pulp and paper grades, and the challenges brought by COVID-19. We finished the year positively, with strong demand in the packaging businesses supported by the long-term growth drivers of sustainability and e-commerce.
I am extremely proud of how our teams rose to the challenges of 2020 and my sincere thanks go to my colleagues for their endurance, enterprise and ongoing commitment. We took decisive action in the early stages of the pandemic, moving quickly to safeguard our people, support our communities and customers, and protect the profitability, liquidity and cash flow of the business while seeking to ensure we remain well placed to deliver value accretive growth into the future.
We continue to make good progress on our sustainability journey. We delivered strongly against our 2020 Growing Responsibly commitments and have now launched Mondi Action Plan 2030, our sustainability roadmap for the next 10 years.
Sustainable packaging continues to be a long-term priority for our customers and wider society. As a leading producer of both paper and flexible plastic-based packaging, we continue to support our customers’ environmental goals with packaging that is sustainable by design adhering to our principle of paper where possible, plastic when useful.
Our capital investment programme to generate value accretive growth, enhance our cost competitiveness and deliver sustainability benefits is progressing well. In January 2021 we commissioned our investment in Štĕtí (Czech Republic), dedicated to producing speciality kraft paper for e-commerce and retail shopping bags. We also started up a new 300,000 tonne kraft top white machine at Ružomberok (Slovakia) and we are moving forward with the previously announced major capital investment projects at Syktyvkar (Russia) and Richards Bay (South Africa). Expansionary projects are also underway at a number of our converting packaging operations, enhancing our production capabilities and product offering to further support our customers. We continue to evaluate further opportunities for value accretive growth and remain excited by the possibilities offered by our platform.
Looking ahead, although the near-term macroeconomic outlook continues to be uncertain, we remain confident in the structural growth drivers in the packaging sectors in which we operate and the strength of our paper position. We are seeing strong order books supporting price increases in most packaging and pulp grades, and are encouraged by the improving uncoated fine paper demand. We are planning longer project-related maintenance shuts and are seeing input cost pressures and currency headwinds, although the benefits from our capital expenditure programme will continue to support our performance.
Underpinned by the Group's integrated cost-advantaged asset base, culture of continuous improvement, portfolio of sustainable packaging solutions and the strategic flexibility offered by our strong cash generation and financial position, the Group remains well-placed to deliver sustainably into the future."
Source: Mondi
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