Solar yielded strongly improved cash flow in Q1
The wholesale group’s revenue and profit for Q1 2009 met expectations.
Revenue in the Danish-owned Solar Group with subsidiaries in eight European countries increased by 3.4% to € 373.2m, and EBITA amounted to € 7.6m, thus matching the group’s most recently announced expectations. Organic growth totalled -7.1% for the period. Solar maintains expectations for 2009 at revenue of between € 1,350m and € 1,450m and EBITA of between € 25m and € 40m.
This year, Solar has special focus on bringing down working capital and interest-bearing debt, making it particularly satisfactory that total interest-bearing debt was reduced from € 232.3m to € 196.9m in Q1.
The profound recession in early 2009 has led us to concentrate work within the framework of the company programme New Solar 2010 on fewer cross-functional activities within the three focus areas Growth, Efficiency and People. This means that necessary restructuring will be carried out in the subsidiaries to strengthen business, simplify structures and reduce the number of staff. But at the same time, we must keep up the strength to adhere to the business model and remain a competitive business, also in future. Only small-scale acquisitions are expected.
Solar’s extensive development project Solar 8000, which focuses on establishing group-standardised processes underpinned by a standard IT system (SAP), has got off to a good start and will influence everyday life in the group significantly over the next three to four years. At the moment, around 60 employees, including 40 Solar employees from corporate functions and subsidiaries and 20 external consultants, together representing 12 nationalities, are working together at corporate headquarters in Kolding to create the foundation for an even stronger Solar.
CEO Flemming H. Tomdrup is available for further comments on (0045) 76 30 42 00.
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